diamond geezer

The Richmond Murderess

2026-05-08T01:00:00.460+01:00

In 1879 all London was gripped by the gruesome murder of a widow in this Richmond cottage. The subsequent trial heard how Julia Martha Thomas had been choked to death by her maidservant, the body then dismembered, boiled and thrown headless into the Thames. The torso washed up downstream a few days later and Kate Webster was duly condemned to hang at Wandsworth Prison. But the remains were never formally identified as Julia's, not until 2010 when the octogenarian who owned the house nextdoor started work on an extension and a skull was unexpectedly unearthed. Today of all days, it's quite a tale.

Julia Martha Thomas was a former schoolteacher in her mid-50s who lived alone at 2 Mayfield Cottages in Park Road, Richmond. She'd had several maids, not many of whom had found her easy to work for, and in January 1879 made a fresh appointment on the recommendation of a friend. Alas people couldn't check references in those days and there was plenty about Kate Webster to be concerned about. She'd grown up in County Wexford and by the age of 15 had already been imprisoned for larceny. At 18 she moved to Liverpool and was imprisoned for larceny there, this time a four year sentence. She then moved to Hammersmith (another 18 months) and Teddington (another twelve months), and by the time of her Richmond appointment had already spent a fifth of her life in penal servitude. If only Julia had known.

The two women didn't get on, Julia finding Kate too lax and Kate finding Julia too strict. After only five weeks Kate was given warning to leave but wangled a few extra days, only to head to the alehouse on the last afternoon rather than accompanying Julia to church. A furious argument ensued during which Julia was pushed down the stairs, and things went rapidly downhill from there.

Mrs. Thomas came in and went upstairs. I went up after her, and we had an argument, which ripened into a quarrel, and in the height of my anger and rage I threw her from the top of the stairs to the ground floor. She had a heavy fall, and I became agitated at what had occurred, lost all control of myself, and, to prevent her screaming and getting me into trouble, I caught her by the throat, and in the struggle she was choked, and I threw her on the floor.

I determined to do away with the body as best I could. I chopped the head from the body with the assistance of a razor which I used to cut through the flesh afterwards. I also used the meat saw and the carving knife to cut the body up with. I prepared the copper with water to boil the body to prevent identity; and as soon as I had succeeded in cutting it up I placed it in the copper and boiled it. I opened the stomach with the carving knife, and burned up as much of the parts as I could.

Kate stashed most of the body parts in a wooden chest and a Gladstone bag, but one foot wouldn't fit so she chucked it in a rubbish heap in Twickenham, and the skull she buried behind the pub at the top of the road. The chest proved too heavy to move so she asked a friend's son to help her drag it to the station, and as they were crossing Richmond Bridge contrived to push it into the water. Such were her silver-tongued skills that none of this aroused any suspicions. Unfortunately for Kate the chest washed up at Barnes Bridge the following morning where it was spotted by a coal porter and taken to the police. But at this stage nobody could identify the body, not even when the spare foot was discovered, so the unidentified remains were laid to rest in Barnes Cemetery, case closed.

Kate might have got away with her crime had she not taken to dressing up as Mrs Thomas while selling off the contents of the house. She returned to her former stomping ground in Hammersmith and met up with the publican of The Rising Sun public house who agreed to take away all the furniture for the sum of £68. But when he turned up in Richmond with his cart and asked to meet with 'Mrs Thomas' - yes that's her - the neighbours spotted the deception. Kate realised the game was up, fleeing post haste back to Ireland aboard a coal steamer.

I did deviate to Hammersmith to take a look at The Rising Sun, homing in on 20 Cardross Street, but the pub closed in the 1960s and has been converted to a private home. Also the new owners had got the builders in, gutting the interior to add a rear extension and loft conversion, continuing my bad luck this week of visiting historic buildings temporarily under wraps. So, back to Richmond.

When police turned up at Mayfield Cottages they discovered several blood stains, burnt finger-bones in the hearth and dubious fatty deposits behind the copper. Kate had also been careless enough to leave behind a letter giving her home address in Ireland, and although she was actually hiding out at her uncle's farm the Irish police consulted her criminal record and caught her there anyway. Kate was brought back to England for a first hearing at Richmond Magistrates Court and then, as public interest in the case grew exponentially, a full trial at the Old Bailey.

The case opened on 2nd July 1879 with Kate denying everything, instead attempting to shift blame to the Hammersmith publican and her friends who'd helped carry the chest. But several witnesses came forward to help piece together the real story, with some even claiming Webster had sold them pots of lard and dripping rendered from boiled human fat. The case lasted six days, accompanied by much hysterical reporting in the press, with the jury taking just an hour and a quarter to find her guilty. Kate attempted to dodge the death penalty by claiming she was pregnant, the judge forced to employ a team of twelve matrons to confirm she wasn't. Only on the night before her execution did she finally confess all, and at 9am the next morning Wandsworth's hangman took her life.

The contents of 2 Mayfield Cottages were duly auctioned, with the Hammersmith publican successful in gaining most of the furniture including the knife with which Mrs Thomas had been dismembered. Daytrippers flocked to the backstreets of Richmond Hill just to see the cursed house, and nobody would live in it until almost twenty years had passed. Madame Tussauds swiftly created a wax effigy and placed it in their Chamber of Horrors, thus well into the 20th century Kate Webster still appeared alongside Dr Crippen, Burke and Hare. This is what happens when you brutally dismember your employer and are utterly useless at covering your tracks.

Park Road eventually returned to normal, indeed became a desirable address. These days Mayfield Cottages make a smart pair bedecked with shrubbery and wisteria, while nextdoor is a gorgeous blue-painted house whose garden path wends between several lush specimens. But Julia's skull remained undiscovered for well over a century, that is until the local pub - The Hole In The Wall - went up for sale. The owner of the blue house was worried it might become flats so bought it for himself and transformed it into a library. During the renovation work in 2010 a "dark circular object" was uncovered which turned out to be a woman's skull. Not only was it fractured but the bone also had low collagen levels, as would be expected after boiling. No DNA confirmation was possible as Thomas had no known offspring but the coroner concluded yes this was indeed the last piece of the mystery.

The blue house has been owned by the same man for over 70 years, bought in 1952 when he was a humble trainee BBC producer. You know him well, he's Sir David Attenborough and today is the widely-celebrated occasion of his 100th birthday. He says he'd never live anywhere else thanks to the unbeatable combination of a temperate climate, a cultured city and the glories of Richmond Park barely a five minute walk away. And here he's returned after all the great projects of his lifetime, from commissioning The Old Grey Whistle Test to making Life On Earth, back to the cosy home sandwiched between a notorious crime scene and the burial place of a fractured skull. Not just a great naturalist and TV executive but the unlikely solver of a murder mystery even older than he is.

Morden South - any questions?

2026-05-07T07:00:00.067+01:00

This week I also spent 10 minutes at Morden South station.
And I have more questions.

Why is nobody else here?
That's because Morden South is the fifth least-used station in London with just 76,000 passengers a year, or 200 a day. Hence you walk in and the place is usually deserted, not even a member of staff to keep an eye on things, just an elevated island platform and some butterflies.

Where is everyone?
They're ten minutes up the road at Morden tube station which has 8 million passengers a year. That's because it has trains every two or three minutes to central London whereas Morden South has unreliable dawdly trains that take 40 minutes to get to Blackfriars and only run every half hour. Of course you'd go to Morden instead.

What went wrong?
In the 1920s two railway companies competed to bring services to this part of London and, following Parliamentary disapproval, had to agree to share the spoils. The City & Southern, which later became the Northern line, was only allowed as far as Morden. Meanwhile the Southern Railway got to build its line all the way to Sutton, thereby denying all those beyond Morden a decent service even 100 years later.

Why the pink stripes?
I think it's a Thameslink thing. I don't think it's a current Thameslink thing.

Is it just me who gets Merton and Morden muddled up?
It really doesn't help having two consecutive stations called South Merton and Morden South. Things were a lot simpler pre-suburbia when Merton and Morden were very distinct places. Then new station names distorted things, so for example the original village of Merton now has a station called South Wimbledon, the original village of Morden is best served by St Helier and the tube station at Morden is immediately opposite Merton Civic Centre.

How many other London stations are two anagrammable words?
In this case that's Modern Shout. The next double-anagrammable station is just up the line at Shout Mentor, whereas the best we can do at Wimbledon Chase is Bowelmind Aches and that's not proper.

What is that typeface?
It is perhaps two typefaces, one for the station name, the other for the signs. I really like the former.

What's it like inside the humungous mosque nextdoor?
This is a question I wondered last year, which is why for Open House I took up the offer of an hour-long tour within. It's a vast complex, built 20 years ago on the site of a former Express Dairy and reopened in 2023 after a nasty fire. One end feels more like a conference centre and events venue, the far end has the prayer hall with space for 6000 worshippers, and once you get past the metal detectors the main walkway is both florally and geometrically impressive.

How many types of automated parcel lockers are there?
I ask because there are two sets of parcel lockers at the entrance to the station, one branded InPost, the other Amazon. A few steps away at Morden Sorting Office the lockers are Royal Mail specific, whereas it's over a mile to the nearest Evri lockers at the Lord Nelson. Is that the full set?

Apparently this is a Category C step-free station. What are these categories?
Category A: step-free access to all platforms
Category B1: step-free access to all platforms but may include long/steep ramps or street-level interchange
Category B2: some step-free access to all platforms (not as good as B1)
Category B3: step-free access to fewer than the total number of platforms
Category C: no step-free access to any platform

What's the point of a Meeting Point?
At busy stations, sure, but here? Nobody's going to miss spotting someone at a near-ghost station with one entrance and one island platform.

How long before most rail replacement buses are scrapped?
The Rail Replacement Bus Information poster at Morden South says 'when trains are unable to run...dedicated rail replacement buses will not serve this station'. Cheers for that. I know it's a little-used line but it's hardly fair to make people pay more for their usual journey, and alas increasingly so.

Do City AM end up throwing most of their papers away?
Mid-morning, well after any commuters would have passed through, I counted about 80 pristine copies of City AM in the hopper by the bus stop. Most of these are never going to be read, they'll just be binned the following morning when the next edition arrives. City AM has a certified daily circulation of 68,338, but how many of those are actually read?

Why do National Rail stations display out-of-date bus spider maps?
The spider map at Morden South is dated September 2015 and shows five local routes. The three that stop outside are still correct but the other two were both changed in March 2024, thus the map is misleading. I found a much worse spider map at Barnes Bridge station yesterday, dated August 2014 and still showing six routes crossing Hammersmith Bridge. Were these TfL stations the maps would have been removed without replacement, but maybe it's a good thing to still have something even if it's not correct.

Could they rewild more station platforms?
Beyond the canopy the centre of the island platform has been left to seed, so at this time of year a long green strip is alive with grasses, wild flowers and butterflies. It's lovely to stand beside, especially when your next train could be a very long time away. How many other unused bits of platforms around London could be enlivened this way?

Who is the sanctimonious moral crusader?
All the stations down this loop have laminated messages stuck to the shelters urging station users to behave better. [Today's fun of Vandalising is tomorrow's unsafe Station and Locality. BE SAFE!] I think only Morden South has the full set of four. [Your Local Station reflects YOU! Let's be proud and keep it clean!] [This is your Local station. Why Graffiti/Destroy? It only reflects you!] Whose self-righteous idea was this? [If we want the world to change, we first have to change Ourselves] If I had a spraycan, I think these misjudged posters are the first thing I'd smother.

Five election leaflets

2026-05-06T07:00:00.057+01:00

It's the local elections tomorrow and London is electing borough councillors.

Here are snapshots of five election leaflets, three of which came through my letterbox and two of which are from opposite sides of London.

This is from the Greens in Bow East.

The bar graph is a fairly staple local election trope, essentially confirming "we are the only credible alternative". For context Bow East currently has a full contingent of three Labour councillors. However Labour don't run Tower Hamlets because Lutfur Rahman does, nor do Labour have the most councillors overall. It's thus a bit rich to say "If you're fed up with Labour..." because locally they run nothing.

The message is similar to Reform UK's slogan for the local elections which is GET STARMER OUT, despite the fact you're not voting for him at all. Both parties are simply piggybacking on the unpopularity of the national party in the hope of getting elected on a tidal wave of negativity... a tactic which might well be successful.

However I'm much more concerned about the graph. Supposedly it shows a projection for Bow East, as calculated in April by the website britain.votes.now.

I was intrigued enough to visit the website where I checked what the figures were... and they were nothing like those displayed in the leaflet. Here's my graph of what they actually said.

The data-bashers at britain.votes.now expect Labour to get 37% of the vote and the Greens 28%. This is not just the other way round to the graph in the leaflet, it's a Labour lead of 9% rather than a Green lead of 1%. I checked the website last week when the leaflet arrived and the data hasn't changed since, it's been resolutely 37%/28%/23%/5%/4%/3% all the time.

The britain.votes.now website also has a separate tab for the 'Win probability' in every ward. Here they assign 65% to Labour winning, 23% to the Greens and 12% to Aspire, i.e. they're fairly convinced Bow East will be a Labour victory. It might not be because that's how elections and probability work, but I saw nothing at britain.votes.now to support the graph in my election leaflet.

I emailed the Tower Hamlets Green Party last week asking them to explain but they haven't bothered responding. Perhaps they're preoccupied by their prospects nextdoor in Bow West where britain.votes.now does indeed give the Greens a victory probability of 65%. But here in Bow East, either the Greens have misinterpreted the data or they've drawn a deliberately misleading graph.

This leaflet is from Aspire, Lutfur Rahman's party. I haven't chopped anything off.

The leaflet is essentially just a huge ballot paper with instructions for how to vote for Lutfur as Mayor. It even explains what 'vote' means in three different languages. The back is much the same but instead shows how to vote for the three Aspire councillors locally. It's pretty much entirely 'how to vote for us', not why.

To be fair, Lutfur sent a whopping 4-page list of achievements separately a few weeks ago and this is merely leaflet number 2. But it does feel like a guide for people who don't understand what politics is about, perhaps due to language issues or lack of interest, thus something you could give to a compliant family member before nudging them towards a voting booth. It's not illegal, but it is an illuminating example of Lutfur's ability to get his vote out.

Labour's candidate for Mayor of Tower Hamlets took a different approach, sending me a two-page personally-addressed letter.

Page 1 mostly says you can't trust Lutfur to run the council properly whereas you can trust Sirajul. Page 2 then explains that Lutfur can be beaten but only if everyone who doesn't want him comes together and votes Labour instead. It's heartfelt but I can't see it happening, indeed this year I'd say Labour doesn't have a hope.

This leaflet is from Reform in Ickenham.

I wasn't given it, I found it on the pavement partially torn. For context the Conservatives won over half the vote in Ickenham and South Harefield four years ago, and britain.votes.now assigns them a 95% probability of winning again.

The first paragraph includes the line "Like many of you, we have become increasingly concerned about the direction our community is headed". However it's not stated what that direction is, it's left to the reader to fill in the gaps. The wider genius of Reform's messaging is also evident in their nationwide slogan REFORM CAN FIX IT, where 'IT' could be potholes, poverty, immigration or whatever makes you think they're on your side.

Paragraph 2 bashes the existing council, including the fact its leader is paid considerably more than the Prime Minister. When you have 2500 employees and are responsible for the wellbeing of 320,000 residents, perhaps that's just the going rate. This section also references "£199,000 paid on translation services for those who refuse to integrate", and you can almost hear the dog whistle there, that's how loud it is.

Overall the leaflet is really non-specific, right down to "ensuring your best interests are served at the council" without spelling out what that means. That's populism for you, but potentially a very successful approach at a time when people just want change.

Finally to Hornchurch where I was handed this leaflet outside Sainsbury's.

It's from the Residents Association because they do things differently in Havering, indeed the HRA currently run the borough as a minority administration. Hence you can feel their frustration when they kick things off by pointing out it's a local election, not a national or regional one. The councillors elected this week will be in charge of libraries, social care and community safety, not immigration, housing targets and ULEZ.

They also weigh in on Reform by pointing out that "a vote for Essex" is Party Political nonsense, listing all the things residents might lose if that nostalgic pipedream were ever implemented.

It must be frustrating for councillors (of all parties) who work hard to do their best for the local community, only to be voted out of office by people with no understanding of what's been achieved. Because people will still walk into the polling booth on Thursday and vote on national issues, or because they hate the Mayor of London, rather than for whoever might be best at emptying the bins. Local elections are all too often the wrong kind of popularity contest, same as it ever was.

Ravensbourne - any questions?

2026-05-05T07:00:00.129+01:00

Yesterday I spent 10 minutes around Ravensbourne station.
And I have more questions.

I wonder how many Londoners know where Ravensbourne station is?
It's not named after a town or suburb so Ravensbourne isn't a terribly helpful name. It could be anywhere unless you live locally or are good at London geography. But I do genuinely want to know how many of you know where it is so I've set up an online poll, here. Options are 'Yes, near enough' and 'Not really'. Please only vote if you live in London or have lived in London. Don't waste your time telling us in the comments, just tell the poll.
After 375 votes (thanks!): 58% of you say yes, you knew where it was

How best to describe where Ravensbourne station is?
1 mile northwest of Bromley, the stop between Beckenham Hill and Shortlands, on the edge of Beckenham Place Park, very very close to the southernmost point in Lewisham but in Bromley, at the bottom of Crab Hill, southeast London, here.

How did Crab Hill get its name?
Genuine question, I don't know.
You say: named after Crab Apple Field, formerly at the top of the hill

What's the point of just one platform having step-free access?
It's OK, we answered this one at Hadley Wood. But same thing here, an easy-to-install ramp in one direction and horrible stairs on the other.

That sign outside's unusual isn't it?
It wouldn't have been unusual in its day, which would have been when Oyster was still new and worth shouting about. They're a Southeastern thing I think. But how many of these old-ish signs, which even include the zone number, linger across the network?

How many other London stations are named after rivers?
Not many, I reckon. On the tube map I can find six with a river's name in the title (Brent Cross, Brent Cross West, Roding Valley, Stamford Brook, Wandle Park and Westbourne Park) but none where the station name is a one-word river. Maybe Ravensbourne is the only example in the UK?
In London also: Lea Bridge, Brent (1923-1976), City Thameslink (maybe), Kidbrooke (sort of)
Outside London: Trent (1862- 1968), Thames Ditton, Dovey Junction

How many of these lovely green fingerposts are there?
This one went up in the 2000s to signpost routes along the Green Chain Walk, also to show how to get to the Capital Ring, and has a trademark loopy circle on top that says Crab Hill. Nobody would find the funding for anything similar these days. I know there's another one in the middle of Beckenham Place Park, indeed I've seen several across London. But how many in total would you say... near enough thirty, approximately fifty or rather more than that?
Answer: 156 on the Green Chain alone (and more elsewhere), thanks Ian

How many people have died because a defibrillator has a keypad?
It's brilliant that we have defibrillators all over the place these days, and also a sad fact of life that they have to be locked away to prevent stealing or vandalism. But when you have to ring 999 to get the keypad code, then push the buttons correctly to open the thing, how many incredibly valuable seconds does that waste and how many lives are lost as a result?

Is there anywhere else in London you can still find Thursday's City AM at the end of the weekend?
Obviously City AM doesn't publish on Bank Holidays, and obviously financial news isn't to everyone's taste. But it can't be a good business model to still have copies left over four days later. Most hoppers across London always empty out so why not here? Also these hoppers are shared with The (Evening) Standard who normally bin the City AMs on Thursday afternoon, so why doesn't the Standard bother with Beckenham? Very much target audience, I'd have thought.

Why does Ravensbourne station still have a ticket office?
It's amongst the 25 least used stations in London and has fewer passengers annually than every tube station in London. But Ravensbourne still has a ticket office (in a nasty fortified cabin added following a fire in 1988) which opens on weekdays from 06:40 to 13:20. I love a nice staffed station but it can't really need seven hours of ticket sales, not in 2026.

How do teensy coffee kiosks make a profit?
This one's tiny, just a mini-shed with a coffee machine and space to operate it. A selection of cold drinks are rammed into the doorway and a few chocolates and mints sit on shelves outside. That's basically all there is so I guess rental should be low. OK so there are 400 commuters passing through every morning, also a lot of dogwalkers heading into the park, but not everyone buys a drink. I know Aziz has been running this particular nameless kiosk for 12 years so it must provide a living, but it always seems economically miraculous that selling coffee in the middle of suburban nowhere can actually turn a profit.

What's the obsession with MIND THE GAP signs on the Catford Loop?
About 10 years ago they plastered big yellow MIND THE GAP signs all along the platforms from Crofton Park to Ravensbourne - there are at least two dozen here, far more than signs telling you the station's name. Safety necessity or complete overload?

Is this how they clean station platforms these days?
It's a woman with what looks like a leaf blower hoovering up dirt from the southbound platform. Interestingly she was doing the same at Beckenham Hill a few minutes earlier so I guess she hops onto the train to work her way down the line. Half an hour between trains means every station gets 30 minutes of cleaning and only one person needs to be employed - bargain!

Why is this Lewisham parish marker not on the borough boundary?
This smoothed metal post is dated 1883 and marks what used to be the edge of London. I found it up a short slope just inside the park, a spot that's now entirely within Lewisham because the borough boundary has been realigned to the edge of the park. Old maps suggest there was another post beside the station because one end of the platform was in Kent and the other wasn't, but I suspect that's long gone.

Is Beckenham Place Park Lewisham's finest park?
It has tough competition, but I suspect yes.

Does anyone ever follow the Beckenham Place Park Nature Trail?
Maybe they did when it was new and there might have been actual leaflets, but what about now? I'd be amazed if anyone spots a tiny yellow circle on a post, does a search for 'Beckenham Place Park Nature Trail' on their phone and then follows it. That's particularly true here because The Friends of Beckenham Place Park wound up in 2023, their website is on its last legs and the relevant file comes with a security warning. So many directional signs linger on around the UK far longer than their physical descriptions.

How did everyone in Beckenham know about yesterday's Vintage Market in the park?
The sheer number of people I passed heading into the park to look at the trinkety stalls by the mansion, it was almost like Blackheath Fireworks crowds used to be. The Vintage Market's been going for 10 years so maybe that helps explain the numbers but it doesn't open regularly, only seasonally, neither did I see any big advertisements at the Beckenham end. In these days of random reels and printlessness, how do people discover events like this are happening?

How long can I keep up this 'station questions' theme?
London has 600+ stations so I could keep this up for well over a year, but don't worry I won't.

General Strike 100

2026-05-04T01:00:00.326+01:00

100 years ago today this was the most important building in the country.

It's 32 Eccleston Square in Pimlico, just round the corner from Victoria station.
Sorry about the scaffolding, that's temporary.

But in May 1926 it was the headquarters of the Trades Union Congress.
And it was here that the General Strike was called, bringing the nation to a halt for nine days.
No struggle like it has ever happened since.

The build-up

It was the miners that started it, or rather the mining companies, or perhaps Sir Winston Churchill. In 1925 as Chancellor he restored Britain to the Gold Standard, thereby raising exchange rates and dampening global demand for exports. This made the mining industry even less profitable than it had been so the private companies that ran the mines looked for ways to make efficiencies. They decided to pay miners less and extend their working day which plainly the mining unions weren't happy with, their campaign slogan being ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day.’ Stanley Baldwin's government subsidised the industry for a further nine months before concurring in April 1926 that change was indeed needed and wages should drop by 13%. Talks broke down on 1st May so the TUC announced that a general strike "in defence of miners' wages and hours" should begin at one minute to midnight on Monday 3rd May. The actual centenary was thus technically yesterday but nobody would have noticed any ill effects until 100 years ago today.

The TUC

The TUC was founded in Manchester in the 1860s, in part because workers wanted a collective voice that wasn't London-centric. It grew to represent a broad coalition of trade-based bodies, initially focused on influencing government policy but by the 1920s keener on developing its own activities. The TUC moved into 32 Eccleston Square shortly after WW1, back when everything could still be coordinated from a single Georgian townhouse, and moved out to somewhere bigger in 1930. An open architectural competition then led to the opening of their current HQ in March 1958, the Grade II* listed Congress House.

The strike

Support for the General Strike was widespread and immediate, the scale of the action surprising even those who'd called for it. The National Union of Railwaymen and the Transport Workers' Federation agreed to stop all movements of coal, bringing public transport across the country to a standstill. Also showing solidarity with the miners were printers, dockers, engineers and others whose labour kept the country running, thereby bringing much of the economy to a halt.

A key issue was that newspapers could not be printed, so the TUC stepped in with a daily screed called The British Worker and the government countered with The British Gazette, a propaganda tool edited by Winston Churchill. The government also leaned heavily on the BBC, at this point still a private company, to broadcast its preferred version of the news.

The strike's impact was initially severe but the government had contingency plans which involved a "militia" of special constables called the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. Picket lines were broken, supplies of newsprint for The British Worker were restricted and soon reports began circulating that men were drifting back to work. Sympathy for the cause was harder to find after a week with no wages, and on 12th May the TUC General Council walked from 32 Eccleston Square to 10 Downing Street to announce its decision to call off the strike. No guarantees were offered in response, such was the capitulation, and inevitably the mining companies did indeed impose longer hours for less pay. The General Strike was thus simultaneously a demonstration that two million working Britons were willing to stand together to fight injustice but also an unequivocable trouncing by the government.

The house

1836: The first houses are built on Eccleston Square, designed by Thomas Cubitt.
1862: Number 32 is built on the southeast side.
1863: The first owner is Lord Eustace Cecil, brother of future Prime Minister Lord Salisbury. who moved in after retiring from the Coldstream Guards and before becoming Conservative MP for South Essex. He has three children called Evelyn, Blanche and Algernon.
1895: The second owner is Duncan Pirie, a Scottish Lieutenant-Colonel who became Liberal MP for Aberdeen North. 32 Eccleston Square is already moving left.
1899: The third owner is Sir Charles John, a barrister and Clerk of the London County Council.
1920: The TUC move in, Eccleston Square no longer being the prime address it once was.
1930: Next to move in are the Rifleman’s Aid Society, a charity for army veterans
1970: ...then the Institution of Public Health Engineers
1984: ...then the National Video Corporation
1987: ... then the Inchbald School of Design
2021: Purchased by art historian Alexander Rudigier for £2,750,000

Future plans

Alexander is attempting to restore 32 Eccleston Square to its former glory as a Georgian townhouse. The majority of similar houses within the area have been subdivided into a single flat per floor with architectural detailing removed, whereas number 32 is substantially unaltered and retains much of its original form. He's already converted it back to a residential dwelling by restoring authentic features and returning the interior to the presumed colour scheme of the first occupant. The current works are relatively minor - removing a flagpole from the facade, dismantling a metal access ladder and replacing a third floor WC with a half-height cupboard. I thank Alexander for the comprehensive documentation attached to recent planning proposals, and also curse the bad luck which means 32 will spend the centenary of the General Strike shrouded in sheeting and scaffolding.

Eccleston Square today

This is one of London's finest garden squares despite its proximity to Victoria, indeed if you stand outside number 32 you can see the Coach Station at the end of the road. The central three-acre garden houses the National Collection of Ceanothus, also several rosebeds and currently a fine wisteria tunnel. It's normally locked but next Sunday you can go in for a look round and home-made teas as part of the National Open Garden Scheme (2-5pm, £5). Eccleston Square is now prime residential estate intermingled with small independent hotels, for example the Jubilee Hotel nextdoor at number 31. Their interior is perhaps over-endowed with patriotic decor, also breakfast's not included, also we now have minimum wage legislation so none of the workers need to go on strike for pay. But what I found most intriguing about this side of the square was the blue plaque outside number 34 which simply says 'Winston Churchill lived here 1909-1913'. How ironic that the politician who did so much to smash the General Strike used to live just two doors down from where it was co-ordinated.

Legacy

The General Strike didn't end well for the TUC and for British miners it was catastrophic. They ended up working longer hours for less, at least until nationalisation in 1947, having endured nine days without pay essentially for nothing. These days the TUC puts a more positive spin on the General Strike, saying it reinforced the importance of trade unions as a collective voice for workers and helped shape the labour movement for the next century. However when miners embarked on a huge strike again in 1984 the rest of the nation didn't come with them and the outcomes were even worse, smashed this time by an even more intransigent establishment. In solidarity with today's 100th anniversary the annual May Day parade will be marching from Clerkenwell to Trafalgar Square this afternoon seeking comradely change. But the days when two million workers could shut the country down, and were brotherly enough to do so, are long gone.

Hadley Wood - any questions?

2026-05-03T07:00:00.073+01:00

Yesterday I spent 20 minutes around Hadley Wood station.
And I have questions.

Is Hadley Wood London's only open air rail station sandwiched between two sets of tunnels?
Whichever way you look at Hadley Wood there are proper tunnels disappearing into a steep slope. Could be the only place like this in London, but is anywhere else as tunnel-bound?

I wonder what proportion of Londoners have ever been to Hadley Wood?
Not many, you'd think, given how off-piste it is. If you count every Londoner who's ever driven from Cockfosters to Potters Bar maybe it reaches 5%. But actually the East Coast Main Line passes through, so that means everyone who's ever taken the train from King's Cross to towns and cities up north has spent a few seconds here, so maybe a majority of Londoners have been?

What's the point of just one platform having step-free access?
Hadley Wood station has two platforms in general use, only one of which has a ramp to make it step-free. I know they installed it because it was easy, whereas adding a lift to the other platform would be very expensive. But why would you... Ah, hang on, anyone intending to travel south is asked to go one stop north to Potters Bar and change there. But what a faff, and on a line where trains only run every half hour.

Why do Jehovah's Witnesses stand around beside racks of religious literature?
I know it's something that started over 10 years ago. I know they wait in groups of two or more. I know they never approach people, they wait to be approached. I know it's better for all concerned than knocking uninvited on people's doors. I know that time spent here counts towards the 'preaching hours' every Jehovah's Witness is expected to complete. On a practical level it's a waste of time, just an opportunity for a nice chat, and highly highly unlikely to lead to a new convert. And yes, many religions do entirely impractical things because they're spiritually rewarding. But is it really worth the bother?

Why is there a 'London Borough of Enfield' sign outside the station?
I know it's because many years ago the council decided to put up signs outside every station in Enfield as well as on the boundaries of the borough. It's a nice touch but no other London council bothers, so why did they decide to be different?

A heritage poster on the footbridge says 'Hadley Wood By Tram', What, they had trams here?
The tram map I found suggests that trams got no closer than High Barnet, two miles away, so it's a lovely poster but wasn't it a bit naughty?

The 399 is London's least used bus. Why do they bother?
The 399 runs in a big brief loop from Barnet to Hadley Wood and back, and last year had only 8600 passengers. That's barely 30 passengers per day, or just five passengers per journey. Those are impressively low figures. Yes the 399 is an hourly bus which only runs between 10am and 3pm, but even so. Meanwhile Hadley Wood station has 362,000 passengers annually, or 40 times as many as the bus! It's lovely that TfL provide a service for the handful of Hadley Wood's 4000 residents who don't have a car, but practically it's hardly worth bothering with.

Why does it say 299 on the back of the bus?
I know they use a vehicle off route 299 to run route 399 during shopping hours. I know they sometimes use old vehicles and have to prop up the route number on a card in the window. But if the blind on the front can say 399 why not the blind on the back? Or is the driver just being lazy?

Why does the Great North Way Cycle Route start here?
According to a sign outside the station it runs 32 miles from Hadley Wood to Letchworth Garden City. What a weird route. I found a leaflet online which is so old that the train company on the leaflet is WAGN, and they wound up in 2004. I think the idea is that you cycle one way and then ride back. Also it seems to be a Hertfordshire thing which would explain why the route barely nudges into London. But the website www.greatnorthway.org.uk is long defunct and I bet nobody's ridden it for ages so why's the sign still here?

Is Sir Nigel Gresley really the most famous person to have lived in Hadley Wood?
Sir Nige is the great railway engineer who designed Flying Scotsman and Mallard. He lived here in the 1920s and Michael Portillo came to unveil a plaque outside the station in 2017. He's so famous he also has plaques in Edinburgh, York, Doncaster and Lytham St Anne's, also a statue at King's Cross. But General William Booth and Jeremy Beadle also lived here, and arguably Emma Bunton is better known than all of them but she doesn't have a plaque, yet.

Does the Nigel Gresley song have the worst lyrics of all time?
It was sung at the plaque unveiling and the lyrics are posted on the footbridge. It was written by someone who once appeared in Cats. I know it was written for kids but blimey it's dire.

What is this gorgeous typeface at 14 crescent west?
It screams postwar typography and I love it, but what is it?

Wow, this must be one of the original numberplates?
Near the station I spotted a Bentley with numberplate A74. That's amazingly early. The first registration mark 'A1' was issued by London County Council in 1903, with 'A' signifying London and subsequent numbers increasing incrementally. The plate's bound to have changed hands several times, also I have a strong suspicion it belongs to an estate agent, but what a thing to own.

How much would it cost to live here?
I checked in the window at Statons, also their online property search. They have 49 properties over £2million and just one under £500,000. So you won't be moving here soon.

Could they sacrifice the Green Belt here for housing?
If they eased the rules technically yes. It's only half an hour by train to the City, but the obvious field is also the village's only park so best not, and beyond that the London/Hertfordshire border muddies things somewhat. But technically yes, hundreds of houses would fit behind Crescent West and the existing residents would absolutely hate it.

Why did I suddenly bump into a huge group of walkers at the top of the recreation ground?
I thought I'd have a nice walk up to the woods on top of the tunnel portal while I was waiting for my train but instead bumped into lots of ramblers standing around listening to a man talk. Why would so many people come here? OK I searched and aha, it's the team at London Walks. This was the start of their 'Ultimate London Walk' from the edge of Hertfordshire to edge of Surrey, done in 14 walks over five weeks. You've missed day 1 but other dates remain, or you can book to do the whole 42 miles in a single week in September.

I also went to Emerson Park station yesterday, but I have no questions there.

TfL FoI requests in April 2026

2026-05-02T07:00:00.041+01:00

12 things we learnt from TfL FoI requests in April 2026

1) The three panellists who select Poems on the Underground are Judith Chernaik (novelist, poet and critic), Imtiaz Dharker (British-Pakistani poet, artist and filmmaker) and George Szirtes (a Hungarian-British poet).
2) Initial design work for a station at Surrey Canal on the Windrush Line has now started, but as yet the required third party funding for construction has not been secured, and this would not be before 2027.
3) The underground line attracting the most noise complaints in 2023 was the Jubilee, in 2024 the Victoria, in 2025 the Northern and so far this year the Central.
4) TfL are trialling new bus shelters at 22 locations. Three are on Blackfriars Road near TfL HQ. The locations outside zone 1 are Barking station, Hampstead High Street, Harlington High Street, Kentish Town Rd, Lower Clapton Road, Maida Vale, Malden Road, Mitcham Road, Romford station, St Mary's Road, Sidcup High Street, Stockwell Road, Thornton Heath station and West Croydon station.
5) Subways which have been decommissioned since 2007 include seven at Elephant & Castle, four at Bricklayers Arms, three down Park Lane, two at Bressenden Place, also Despard Road, Foxhole Road, Lea Bridge Road, Monument Way, Neathouse Place, Old Marylebone Road, Whitechapel High Street and the Lucozade Factory.
6) The tube station with the most lift/escalator faults last year was Waterloo with 451. These took an average of 35 hours and 40 minutes to repair.
7) Don't ask TfL questions about really old stuff because "our records from 2001 to 2003 are not complete as all paper records has been disposed of, therefore we do not hold a lot of relevant documentation".
8) During the first three months of 2026 South Kenton station was left unstaffed on 42 different days. 11 of these were due to safety concerns following a ceiling leak.
9) TfL maintain six green-roofed bus shelters, five in Lewisham and one in Westminster. They have no plans to install more due to the high installation and maintenance costs and relatively low biodiversity benefit compared to other initiatives.
10) Twelve new DLR units are now at Beckton depot, even though none have been used in passenger service for the last six months.
11) The SE postcode area has 472 Oyster Retail Agents, ahead of E with 429 and N with 381. The postcode districts with just one Oyster Retail Agent are CM14, CR6, DA9, HP6, KT10, KT18, RM17, RM19, SL2 and WD3.
12) If you ask 'How many people got smacked round the head by bus wing mirrors in 2025?', TfL will refuse to respond because it would cost more than £450 to find out.

(as usual, all FoI requests are clickable)

Also someone put in an FoI about the Bow Roundabout roadworks so I can bring you...

Bow Roundabout update #23

In this FoI we learn that construction costs for the whole Bow roundabout scheme were £1,882,513. We also learn that the London Borough of Newham took over management of the site on 30 March 2026.

Alas the new contraflow slip road under the flyover has never opened, despite being completed over 12 months ago, because it has potential low headroom issues.

It turns out that "the London Borough of Newham raised the risk of potential collision with the Bow flyover structure and requested a gantry was constructed to protect the structure". This was in July 2024, three months before roadworks began.

The FoI includes 40 pages of back and forth emails between TfL and Newham regarding the gantry issue. Newham said they weren't happy to proceed until they saw exactly where this gantry would go and what it would look like. They also weren't pleased that TfL's plans totally mucked up their long-term plans to add an eastbound bus lane here. TfL were mostly saying come on guys we really need to get this signed before time runs out.

TfL spent £29,861 to undertake a feasibility study into construction of the gantry, then a further £63,906 for detailed design. It would have cost £250,000 to build the gantry.

However they're not building it.

Instead "as an alternative to installing a gantry, it has been proposed to keep the slip road closed and implement a new road layout under an experimental traffic order." Implementing this "temporary permanent road layout" for six months will cost only £18,000.

In other words they intend to go ahead with Newham's bus lane proposal, the scheme the council had in mind before the roadworks started, and the slip road under the flyover will not open. Lorries exiting Marshgate Lane will have to continue turning left as they have done ever since the summer of 2024.

It seems that in TfL's keenness to get the roadworks started they built a slip road under the flyover that'll probably never be used. It took months to build because it has its own signalised junction and was the most significant part of the entire five month project. And it's all likely to be money down the drain, because it turns out a bus lane was a much better idea than a contraflow slip road all along.

The slip road under the Bow Flyover is thus, very probably, a complete white elephant. If you were inconvenienced while they were building it, it seems they were wasting your time.

Previous updates: #0 #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14 #15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20 #21 #22

Unblogged April

2026-05-01T07:00:00.010+01:00

30 unblogged things I did in April

Wed 1: My blogpost about TfL producing a new set of bus maps may have been an April Fool but Quickmap do a truly excellent Greater London bus map which is online here. I might have saved that jpg to my phone.
Thu 2: The West Ham chunk of the Greenway may be closed until (sigh) Autumn 2028 but all the lampposts are still lit after dark, illuminating absolutely nobody.

Fri 3: Norfolk day 1: Damn I forgot to pack toothpaste. Hello to my nephew who's just moved out of London to the ancestral homeland. Impressed by my brother cutting £100 off the Easter shopping bill by using Nectar points.
Sat 4: Norfolk day 2: My niece has to endure the rest of us discussing baby names. The first garden-cooked lunch of the year. Ah so that's what Acle looks like. Saturday Night Live is quite good but not worth getting Sky for.
Sun 5: Norfolk Day 3: Blimey that was a stormy night (thanks Dave). Thankyou for my second-hand books. Maintain a family tradition by hiding cardboard eggs around the house. Crumble and custard please. Thickthorn roadworks are bad.
Mon 6: Norfolk Day 4: The Classic FM top 300 feels overwhelmingly unchallenging. Find a government-issue box of hole reinforcers dated October 1979. Oh, I did bring my toothpaste after all but it was hiding in a side-pocket.

Tue 7: That feels like the closest the world has come to tipping into Armageddon since the last despotic madman made a lunatic threat. Thanks for letting us off with 90 minutes to go.
Wed 8: I see Radio 4's Round Britain Quiz has slimmed down from six teams to four, so just eight episodes this year rather than twelve. I bet that means they can record it all in one weekend rather than two, so it's just another BBC cost-cutting measure.
Thu 9: Gail's have opened a bakery branch in Stratford, admittedly in Westfield, but blimey! I remember being similarly blindsided when a Starbucks opened in Stratford in 2007.
Fri 10: I forgot the freezer compartment door was open and bashed my head on it, ouch. Best not do that too often.

Sat 11: A guided ramble was gathering at Knockholt station, and this woman who'd arrived early was wondering if there was a cafe nearby. You couldn't have picked a remoter station, I said. She didn't stop talking, or worrying, so I felt sorry for the other lady who'd arrived early and was her sole audience. And this is why I don't like going on group walks.
Sun 12: You'll be glad to hear that the family tortoise is getting a new run, that is unless you're my brother and you've got to make it and bolt it together before she wakes up.
Mon 13: Would you like to watch tube trains moving around the network like pulsing worms? Try londonunderground.live.
Tue 14: I hate it when my laptop restarts overnight and casually deletes some of the files I have open. I'd mind less if it warned me in advance.

Wed 15: I do not necessarily endorse Mr Dweeb in Crouch End, but it is a great name for a tech repair business.
Thu 16: Anyone could see who this year's Apprentice winner was going to be from the very early episodes, and I suspect so could Lord Sugar, but he still trooped through twelve episodes to get there.
Fri 17: Amongst the unexpected travel delays I've suffered this week a) a fire on the Westway b) a police cordon in Thornton Heath c) a logjam of traffic at Canada Water. Also innumerable bloody temporary traffic lights.
Sat 18: Gah, the newspaper's gone up again, last week £4.20, now £4.50. It was only £1.30 twenty years ago.

Sun 19: Six things I didn't mention in Bishop's Stortford: i) adverts for lawnmowers on the station platform, ii) a barber shop called Hairy Wolves, iii) the relocated water fountain iv) Baron Dimsdale's memorial v) the Stortford Shuttle vi) the night in 1967 when Cream were supported by the Teapots.
Mon 20: In partnership with On London, this analysis of local election prospects in all 32 boroughs is phenomenally detailed and a fascinating read. We'll see next week if it was correct.
Tue 21: Had a 25th anniversary night out on the town with BestMate which kicked off at the restaurant where we used to eat in 2002, then moved on to the pub where we used to drink. We ended up at the theatre to watch the Yes Prime Minister finale, which was good but nowhere near sharp enough.

Wed 22: Every time I cross Hammersmith Bridge I see three 72 buses parked at the bus stand on the north side, which suggests this recently rejigged route is substantially over-bussed.
Thu 23: Twelve days ago the tree outside my window was blazing with white blossom. Today that's all shrivelled and the branches are teeming with green leaves. The spring transition is so brief.
Fri 24: In Muswell Hill I was approached by a downbeat man who told me the buses weren't running, also it's too dangerous to sit upstairs after dark, and had I heard this Irish lad got stabbed, and basically you can't go out safely because London's so dangerous these days. I told him I lived in Tower Hamlets and it wasn't edgy it was absolutely fine, but I don't think I shifted his negative worldview.
Sat 25: Today I went to Chessington South, and I am very pleased with the consequences of this decision.

Sun 26: I was reminded that I don't have the football gene when a rowdy phalanx of chanting Leeds United fans boarded the train at Ruislip, absolutely pumped for the upcoming Wembley semi-final, and imagine believing in something as fervently as that.
Mon 27: If you enjoyed my 2020 post about low bridge signs, Matt Parker's made a much better video in which (with the aid of a Durham maths professor) he reveals how many possible signs there are and which of the 65 nobody can find.
Tue 28: Yesterday I saw a pack of 12 pens I wanted to buy, normally £20 but reduced to £13. But postage added another fiver so I thought I'd go to Covent Garden and buy it in person. Alas when I got there today a) the price was now £27 b) they'd sold out. Seize the day!
Wed 29: I don't suffer from hayfever but today I was snuffling and sneezing, just for a few hours, peaking in Kennington Park. Looks like the oaks were to blame.
Thu 30: How can it be a decade? Well done.

I is for Ickenham

2026-04-30T07:00:00.293+01:00

LONDON A-Z
I is for Ickenham

My next alphabetical destination has its own tube station, hence is perhaps not the unsung suburb the previous eight have been. But Ickenham is still properly off-piste for the vast majority of Londoners, tucked away in Metro-land between Uxbridge and Ruislip with a historic identity all of its own. Wikipedia suggests "no major historical events have taken place in Ickenham" and also lists no famous former residents, but it is still broadly interesting and very much not icky.

The heart of the former hamlet of Ickenham is the village pump by the village pond opposite the village church. The pump was sunk in 1866 and raises water 80 feet from the chalk below, the overspill from which feeds the duck-infested pond. The octagonal canopy was added to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, its tiled roof resting on twisted columns and topped by a weathervane. It was nearly demolished in the 1920s for being a traffic hazard but thankfully villagers stepped in and told the miserable motorists where to go. The adjacent pub is much older, that's the Coach and Horses, its beams essentially Tudor and its seven HD TV screens only months old after a six-figure internal refresh. I didn't venture in because the pub was absolutely overflowing with boozy Leeds United fans who'd coached down to watch the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, but I bet they weren't quite so upbeat on the journey home.

Across the road is the even older parish church of St Giles, its nave perhaps late 13th century, the chancel 14th and the wood-shingled bell turret 15th. The porch is mostly timber-framed and has just the right amount of wonk, visually speaking, but is probably locked. The absence of a clock is now balanced by a gold-etched sundial on the church hall, the inscription HEW MMIII MLW being two-thirds initials and one-third Roman numerals. I picked up a copy of Ickenham Church News by the gate and was struck by the dense list of throwback local societies (Flower Club, Bowls Club, Ballroom Dancing, Townswomen's Guild, Dramatic Society) and especially by the cordial invite to become a member of the local Home Guard (1944) Association Private Members' Club, almost like the 21st century never happened.

Perhaps Ickenham's finest heritage attraction is the Ickenham Miniature Railway, this the unique creation of the Ickenham and District Society of Model Engineers. They've crammed an inordinate amount of looping tracks and sidings into a very compact space behind the pub car park, this accepting either 5" or 3½" gauge rolling stock, and will happily whizz visitors round their mini loops aboard steam-hauled trolleys for a fare of £1 a time. If you fancy a visit the next monthly Open Day is this Saturday from noon, while at any other time you'll have to make do with staring at Ickenham St Giles halt through the iron gate.

The actual Ickenham station opened on the Metropolitan Railway in 1905 after the parish council pleaded for a halt. First it brought weekend trippers, then in the 1920s and 1930s it brought thousands of new residents keen to live in what was marketed as Ickenham Garden City. The station is the drabbest on the Uxbridge branch, this the inevitable consequence of the buildings being built in 1970. Step free-access arrived five years ago and an additional car park for disabled passengers is almost complete alongside, a £1.4m project which delivers just three spaces atop a hefty platform. Across the road is Ickenham Hall, a Georgian farmhouse with an even older listed redbrick wall out front, which was purchased by the council in 1948 for use as a youth club. Since then the 158-seat Compass Theatre has been bolted on behind as a real boost to the arts, where works by Alan Ayckbourn and Agatha Christie await your custom next month.

Keep walking to the back of the Glebe Estate, past houses that confirm pebbledash isn't always bad, and you can follow Austins Lane into deep countryside. This tracks a small channel called the Ickenham Stream, skirts some woodland where I disturbed a deer and passes a scrapyard with 'Trespassers Will Be Shot, Survivors Will Be Shot Again' written on the blackest of gates. Eventually you reach Ickenham Marsh, a nature reserve on the banks of the Yeading Brook, where you can either follow the path or yomp off freely across tussocks of rush and hair grass towards Ruislip Gardens. I adored the solitude - just me and a couple of ducks - until what sounded like a fleet of vacuum cleaners started up behind the trees, this because the runway at RAF Northolt is just a jetblast away.

Ickenham's chief river is the Pinn, a floodable corridor which divides the suburb in two. It's possible to walk along most of it, especially down south in Swakeleys Park where one side is bounded by a long ornamental lake. But the quirkiest spot is to the north where a wooded 30m square island is squished into an artificial meander in the river. This is Pynchester Moat, one of London's handful of medieval moated sites and a Scheduled Ancient Monument to boot. Its provenance is contested but they found 14th century earthenware and flint tools on site and also excavated part of a wooden causeway which used to cross to the centre. Walk the wrong side of the river and you'd never spot it, walk the right side and it feels like your own special personal fiefdom for the couple of minutes it takes to negotiate the perimeter.

The Pinn is one of the natural features being comprehensively assaulted at present by the construction of HS2. This launches from tunnel to viaduct at a portal just beyond West Ruislip and is starting to veer away from the Chiltern mainline as it crosses the river. A truly massive swathe of earthworks has been carved through the golf course and on across the Green Belt, the realignment of the river just one of the immense permanent changes hereabouts. To their credit HS2 have spent dosh on proper footpath diversions and also provide regular updates to local residents on ongoing works which this week include conveyor foundation removal and the installation of noise barriers. When they've finally departed a huge triangular wedge of Ickenham between Harvil Road and Breakspear Road will have been remodelled into three grassy mounds using spoil from the Northolt Tunnel, and if you've not been out here to see the gobsmacking transformation recently they hope you'll never notice afterwards.

The other local sight someone hopes you'll never see is Swakeleys House. This Jacobean mansion was one of Ickenham's two former manor houses, built in 1638 for the Sheriff of London (and future Mayor) Sir Edmund Wright. It has fancy gable ends in the Dutch style, an oak staircase and a lot of intricate woodwork. After the last owner sold it off in the 1920s, kickstarting development of the prestige Swakeleys housing estate, the mansion ended up in the hands of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Sports Association and eventually fell into disrepair.

The house was restored in the 1980s to the benefit of all, but since 2009 the private owners have sought increasing seclusion, starting by kicking out the biannual Ickenham Festival from the grounds. They also now restrict public access to Open House just once a year, and when I went in 2018 all we were permitted to see of the interior was a hallway and a painted staircase. Since then the hedge they planted around the perimeter has thickened to make it very hard, but not quite impossible, to see the house, and I suspect if you come back in a few years (or in high summer) it'll have vanished altogether, the miserable isolationists.

More Ickenham mini-bits
» RAF West Ruislip was sited in north Ickenham from 1917 to 2007, the tenants for the last half-century being the US Air Force. The site is now an estate of 400 not-especially dense houses and as far as I can tell no memorial of any kind exists on site.
» A lone oak tree in a tiled circle beside Swakeleys Road is recognised on a headstone as Ickenham's 'Gospel Oak' where the curate and parishioners would pray for healthy crops on Rogation Sunday (but it's not the original tree, it's the fourth attempted replacement).
» There's a genuine sense of community here, exemplified by the fact a majority of the households are members of the Ickenham Residents’ Association. You've just missed the AGM but I get a sense from the quarterly newsletters that its priorities are caution and tutting, especially in the areas of planning, parking and HS2.
» The Swakeleys and Glebe Estates are served by one of London's 10 least frequent TfL buses, the hour-and-a-halfly U10.
» Businesses in Ickenham include Scentsational (florists), Suzanne's Dance Supplies (also school of modern jazz), Wick & Ceramic (candle workshop), Burgerbey (for halal patties), Maison du Soleil (for boulangerie and patisserie) and The Tichenham Inn (a Wetherspoons, not usually packed with Leeds supporters, Tichenham being the medieval name for Ickenham).
» The 1908 Olympic Marathon passed through Ickenham, this the event that set the distance as 26 miles and 385 yards, so it's not actually true that no major historical events have taken place here.
» The next Ickenham Festival will take place from 6th-14th June, with the big Village Day on Saturday 13th should you want to see the place at its best.

Public downsizing

2026-04-29T07:00:00.002+01:00

I was in Bromley town centre yesterday and thought I'd pop into the library to see the museum.

It wasn't there.

I found the display cases where the museum used to be but they were all empty, that is apart from one where a mannequin's torso stood alone, its former clothing whisked off into storage.

All was explained in a poster stuck to the glass.

The Bromley Museum collection has been carefully moved into secure storage while we prepare for our move to the new Bromley Central Library at 145 High Street.

And I thought, there go two more public facilities downsizing into something smaller.

The issue for Bromley is that the concrete 1970s building where the library and museum are housed is approaching end of life so they're moving out. The adjacent Churchill Theatre has been sold (intact) to a consortium including Galliard Homes, so expect a final outcome involving continued dramatics and a fair few flats. Meanwhile the UK's 7th busiest library will be closing for four months later this year, the shutdown recently postponed from March to 'just after the summer exams', before moving to a new spot on the High Street. Unexpectedly it'll now be inside a former Top Shop, which isn't normally where you'd find a lot of books.

Bromley's Top Shop has been empty since 2020 so sticking a library in there makes good sense, but it'll be smaller with 28% less space for adult fiction/non-fiction and 7% fewer books. The children's library will be larger so that's a plus, but the rest of downstairs will be mostly seating, a few bestsellers and a couple of meeting rooms insufficient to cope with current use. Upstairs (where TopMan, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins used to be) will be better crammed with bookshelves, study space and a rejigged Local History Centre. But when it comes to anything museumy all that's being provided is "a vitrine wall which displays artefacts from the borough archives", which if I read the plans right will comprise only three slimline cases.

The hoardings outside 145 High Street tell the history of the site: i) originally The White Hart Hotel, ii) rebuilt as a Littlewoods department store in the 1960s, iii) subsequently occupied by Marks & Spencer, Primark and Top Shop. More tellingly they also tell the history of Bromley's central library, which seems very much a rise and fall. A membership-based Literary Institute opened in 1845, as used by local schoolboy HG Wells, this enlarged in 1864 within new premises at the Town Hall. The first public library opened in 1894 and was upgraded to a proper Carnegie Library on the High Street in 1903, until this too was deemed insufficient and the current concrete hulk opened in 1977. 2026's shift is thus the first backwards move, but I guess in an age of digitalisation we should be glad it's not even smaller.

What's not displayed is a history of Bromley Museum because that would be too depressing. It opened in 1965, the same year the borough was created, within the former medieval priory at Orpington. All sorts of local treasures (Sir John Lubbock's archive, HG Wells's tooth, David Bowie’s corduroy jacket) were displayed in increasingly underfunded surroundings, until 2015 when the council closed it and made all the staff redundant. Instead they opened Bromley Historic Collections, a few thematic cases in Bromley Library which I described in 2017 as "a taster for a museum that no longer exists". Now even that's gone and all that'll remain in the new set-up is a scant wall of artefacts, which is gobsmackingly little for a borough of 330,000 people.

Other boroughs to have squandered their museums include Wandsworth (closed to save money 2007), Barnet (sold 2011), Greenwich (closed 2018), Southwark (squished into Walworth Library in 2021) and Enfield (decimated in the corner of a cafe in 2022). It's not all grim - in 2023 I awarded top marks to Barking and Dagenham, Ealing, Hounslow, Harrow and Sutton for their municipal offerings. But when the choice is paying for adult social care or running a nice museum a lot of boroughs have thrown in the towel, egged on by austerity, with cultural services often the easiest to cut.

Dozens of London's libraries have have been downsized in recent years, not just Bromley Central, or simply shut for good. Take Wood Street in Waltham Forest for example, a fine Fifties edifice demolished to make way for a nine-storey block of flats, its replacement a scant slice of books beneath another residential development. See also Sidcup, Uxbridge, Canning Town and any number of other libraries that are now fewer shelves in a smaller but more modern space. See also the inexorable rise of the self-service library, e.g. Cheam and Burnt Oak, these now cut-price study spaces without a librarian. See also offboarding libraries to community operation, e.g. Ponders End and Bexley Village, these still loved by residents if not by councillors. And see also libraries that open just three days a week, for example the three nearest libraries to Bromley Central (which isn't going to help when that closes for four months).

Then there's Post Offices, like this one I saw at the weekend in Uxbridge. Thousands have been downsized to save money, often shifting into counters at the back of other retail premises. Here in Uxbridge services moved to the back of WH Smith when the Crown Post Office closed, but WH Smith is now TG Jones and they're closing this branch next month and suddenly the Post Office is toast. Everyone from the local MP downwards is up in arms but nothing can be done until alternative arrangements can be made, so from 5pm on 30th May it's a bus ride to Hillingdon or Cowley every time you need counter service.

And there's banks too. We've had years of closures and general thinning out, obviously due to the uptake of online banking but with the consequent creation of financial deserts. Islington's Halifax is doomed, Woking's Santander closed yesterday and the Nat Wests in Barnet, Eastcote, Hornchurch and Orpington all shut next month. Here in Bow our last Barclays and Nationwide fled in 2021 but we do at least have Stratford nearby, whereas a lot of provincial towns are being stripped away to nothing and might get a paltry banking hub stopgap if they're lucky.

There are many reasons for all this public downsizing, most notably funding cuts, digitalisation and the need to scrimp more savings. But we're also losing a lot of public buildings, the foundations of a public service presence and places you can actually visit to do things. If we're not careful the next generation will have nowhere to go that isn't commercially focused, not that some downsizing isn't necessary but in the face of economic rationalisation let's try not to extinguish all the good stuff.

The Queen Elizabeth II Garden

2026-04-28T07:00:00.016+01:00

The Queen Elizabeth II Garden opened yesterday in the heart of Regent's Park. [7 photos]

It's two acres of royal tribute on the site of some former glasshouses. It looks both to the past and to the future. It's very nicely done if not yet at its finest. And if you turned up early enough yesterday they gave you a free souvenir booklet to tell you what you were looking at. I shall be quoting from it during what follows using regal purple text, just so you don't think I wrote those bits.

On Day 1 a queue formed outside and only one entrance was unlocked, but the long term intention is that all four gates will be open and anyone can wander through, just like any other corner of the park. This is where all the shrubs for the Royal Parks used to be grown until the nursery moved to Hyde Park in 2018. This left a brownfield site with considerable potential so a plan was hatched to create an amazing garden to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. But following her death it became a horticultural tribute instead, a garden of colour and contemplation, of biodiversity and beauty, of memory and hope. In short some swirly paths, a few water features and a lot of nice plants.

The chief focus near the main point of entry is a generous circular pond which creates a tranquil setting with contemplative and reflective qualities. It's deep enough to float the stems of several water plants and shallow enough to see the pebbly bottom, also protruded into by a stumpy rectangular jetty. This is just one of the garden's carefully distributed features that provide punctuation points of interest and character or 'moments of delight', as the horticulturalspeak has it.

Another moment of delight is the long metal lattice on the landward side, this a striking pergola which frames the terrace. Take a seat on one of several benches and you can see where the climbing plants haven't yet made much of an assault in an upward direction. The pergola is made from several of the struts from the original greenhouses on this site, thus it embodies the garden's circular economy principles. It also has 56 struts, one for each of the countries in the Commonwealth, although as far as I'm aware there are no plans to remove one every time an existing member secedes.

Your eye will likely then be drawn by a tall brick structure, this a water tower retained as a nod to the site's working past and repurposed to create a landmark. It has a splendidly ornate whorl of blacksmithery on top, the fronds representing plants symbolic of the four home nations, also a small silhouetted corgi if you look really carefully. As the garden's highest viewpoint it offers a small raised balcony ideal for gaining a wider overview, this accessed via a teensy passageway likely clogged by white-haired visitors queueing for their own look. Five nestboxes await the arrival of mating swifts, a hi-tec gizmo broadcasting bird sounds at dawn and dusk in the hope of luring them in.

It's early days for the flowers but they do already look semi-spectacular, especially the alliums and the large floppy tulips. Species the Queen is known to have liked take centre stage, especially anything found in her wedding bouquet or funeral wreath like rosemary or myrtle. The agapanthus came from Windsor Great Park, their striking blue flowers a direct connection to her private estate... or will be when blooming season begins. A scant few daffodils can be seen dying out around the main pond, a bit of a waste because their yellow trumpets peaked long before the garden opened, but publication deadlines do at least mean they take pride of place in all the publicity shots.

If you're expecting normal soil no, everything appears to be planted in a pebbly sand. That's because it's three-quarters concrete from the former glasshouse site, all ground up in a sustainable manner, indeed you could say turning grey to green. Don't expect lawns either, indeed the gardens have a strict 'no picnics' rule because there's loads of grass elsewhere in the park for that. What they've really gone for here is a scheme that pushes the boundaries of sustainable gardening in an attempt to climate-proof the site. There's almost a Mediterranean feel rather than lush planting, all the better to commemorate the Elizabethan Age in a considerably drier future.

If you're wondering about the pattern made by the paths these supposedly reflect the Queen's personality. The central promenade reflects her unwavering sense of duty and service, because of course it does, bisected by a meandering path symbolising her long and remarkable personal journey. There are certainly plenty of peripheral paths to follow, from broad meadowlike strolls to cooler wiggles through the woodland fringe. One end of the main spine ends at a roundel offering a moment of quiet reflection, i.e. there are a heck of a lot of benches, also a looping inspirational quote uttered by Her Maj in a random Christmas Broadcast. This is where the mega tulips are, also a magnolia that looked magnificent a few weeks ago but has alas now shot its load.

The garden gets a tad less formal and more meadowy the further north you go, with occasional specimen trees that provide structure and punctuation. Here the ponds are more like gravel scrapes, the long grass less floral and the resilient planting occasionally brushed by an arcing sprinkler. The project boasts that it's 184% more biodiverse than the glasshouses that were here before, a fact it can't possibly know for sure at this stage. But I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt because while I was rounding the rear corner a tiny newt scuttled out across the path and its appearance fair bowled me over. I lost it a few seconds later somewhere in the swale but how great to know that not everything you read in purple prose is greenwash.

If you do come to see the new garden don't forget to visit the Park's older more established gardens because at this time of year they're gorgeous. Just round the back is the St John's Lodge Garden, a meditative enclosure entered down a wisteria tunnel currently at its peak, whose manicured sculptural beauty I'd somehow never stumbled upon before. But the real treat is Queen Mary's Garden, this eight times larger than Queen Elizabeth's, a circular rose garden par excellence complete with fountains, waterfalls and thorny beds that peak in June. The joy of Regent's Park is that it has so many distinct landscapes, so how great to have another one.

The Queen Elizabeth II Garden is certainly a welcoming, fully accessible, climate-resilient space, also a garden of exceptional quality and ambition imbued with subtle symbolism that will inform the collective memory. Within this diverse habitat mosaic are a number of unique landscape settings with points of reflection and contemplation woven throughout. Take time to explore and to find quieter moments to pause and reflect, taking in many of the key moments of delight along the way. For this is truly an exemplar of how beautiful landscape design and environmental responsibility can work together to shape a garden of exceptional quality and ambition that is designed to grow more beautiful with every passing year. Her Maj would certainly be chuffed to see how the garden she approved has turned out.

How to travel free on TfL services

2026-04-27T07:00:00.161+01:00

How to travel free on TfL services

Ride the Woolwich Ferry
One of the finest ways to travel for free is aboard the Woolwich Ferry. TfL have a legal obligation to operate it thanks to the Metropolitan Board of Works Act 1885 (whose powers were transferred to the GLA in 2000) and are also prohibited by law from imposing tolls. There are thus no tappy pads on either bank, you simply head down the walkway and enjoy a free ride between Woolwich and North Woolwich, either lurking in the cabin or standing out the back amid the elements. Some might argue the views aren't great but I say look down at the swirling waters of the Thames and tell me that's not evocative... and all for nothing!

Ride the cablecar with a bike before 10.30am
If you've always wanted to ride the Dangleway for nothing, just bring a bike first thing and they'll waive the usual £7. The free offer only applies before 10.30am (which is good because the cut-off used to be 9.30am) and also only on weekdays, bank holidays excepted.

Ride a rail replacement bus
These can be a great way to travel long distances for nothing so long as you don't mind the journey taking ages. Next weekend for example you can take the free bus from Harrow-on-the-Hill to Chesham saving £2.40 or the non-stop replacement coach from Hammersmith to Heathrow saving £2.60.

Ride the Silvertown Shuttle Cycle Bus
This Mayoral freebie kicked off a year ago when the Silvertown Tunnel opened, TfL having decided it was a lot cheaper to run a bus shuttle than to build a bespoke bike lane beneath the water. The shuttle bus links City Hall with the grim end of the Greenwich Peninsula and runs every 12 minutes between 6.30am and 9.30pm. Latest figures suggest about 100 journeys are made daily. Anyone can use it so long as they have a bike of an appropriate size (2.14m long, 0.76m wide, 1.4m high max), while the bikeless can only watch as yet another empty vehicle departs.

Ride the DLR under the Thames (until 26th May 2026)
Another Silvertown sweetener is the Mayor's offer to refund minimal cross-river journeys made by DLR. Specifically that's journeys between Woolwich Arsenal and King George V or between Island Gardens and either Cutty Sark or Greenwich. Note that you do actually have to pay to travel, you can't just rock up, but fares on these very specific journeys are then refunded.

Ride any of the three Tunnel-going buses (until 26th May 2026)
The three buses which use the Blackwall and Silvertown Tunnels are the 108, 129 and SL4, and all three are free to ride. That's any journey on the route even if doesn't go under the river, which seems extremely generous, indeed every cash-strapped punter travelling from Bow to Stratford takes the 108 rather than one of the three full fare routes. Back to normal in a month's time though.

Take the train within the Heathrow free zone
Free bus travel around Heathrow ended in June 2021. But it's still free to travel by train between any of the Heathrow Terminals, be that by tube, Elizabeth line or Heathrow Express. Hatton Cross is also included in the free travel zone so if travelling to the airport it can be a lot cheaper to break your journey here and do the last leg for nothing. You need Oyster or contactless to open the gates, these methods charging you nothing once you tap out. Alternatively you can use the special machines at airport terminals to collect a free blue ticket, indeed you can print as many as you like.

Use a Hopper fare on buses and trams
Introduced in September 2016, the Hopper fare offers unlimited additional journeys within one hour of touching in. Technically they're not free because the first journey cost the normal rate, but everything after that genuinely costs nothing. It applies to bus journeys and tram journeys, also a mixture of the two, that is unless you try switching from tram to bus at Wimbledon in which case the software can't cope. In a particularly generous move, the Hopper fare also applies to multiple bus journeys in the space of an hour even if you make a tube or train journey inbetween.

Make 'one more journey' on buses
So as not to strand passengers whose Oyster cards run out of money, the 'one more journey' protocol was introduced in June 2014. It applies to any card with insufficient funds but not a negative balance, allowing such passengers to travel once. They also receive an emergency fare advice slip which reminds them that their card needs to be topped up before another journey can be made. Technically you're still being charged because you end up with a negative balance BUT if you present an Oyster card with precisely £0.00 in credit then your bus ride is indeed free.

Hit the daily or weekly cap
Again technically this isn't free travel because you've had to pay a lot of fares up front. But once you hit the daily cap every subsequent journey within these zones is free and this could be a considerable amount. Ditto if you hit your weekly cap on Friday then anything you do on Saturday or Sunday will cost nothing. Caps are also available for those who travel only by bus or tram, currently £5.25 daily and £24.70 weekly.

Get a refund for a delayed journey
You may be able to claim a refund if your journey on the Tube or DLR is delayed for 15 minutes or more. On the Overground and Elizabeth line it's 30 minutes or more instead. TfL may refuse if the delay was out of their control but it's always worth a try. You apply here and must claim within 28 days of the delay. Contactless refunds are only provided if your card is registered. Last year TfL paid out £487,460 in refunds so you might be missing out.

Be young
Children under 5 travel free, except on the cablecar or river services. Children under 11 travel free with a fare-paying adult (up to 4 of them). Children aged 5-10 get free travel with a Zip Oyster photocard. 11-17 year-olds resident in London get free travel on buses and trams.

Be old
On reaching your 60th birthday, Londoners can apply for a 60+ Oyster card which allows free travel on tubes, trains and buses. Free travel applies after 9am on weekdays and all day at weekends. Terms and conditions apply. On reaching state pension age (currently 66) you're sent an Older Person's Freedom Pass instead. A bonus for Freedom Pass holders is that the Elizabeth line beyond West Drayton to Reading is included. I love my 60+ Oyster card and bash it regularly.

Be disabled
A Disabled Person's Freedom Pass applies whatever age you are. Free travel is also offered to any blind or partially sighted person with a guide dog, to puppy walkers training guide dogs or to anyone boarding a bus in a wheelchair. Dial-A-Ride (for those unable to use public transport) is also a free service.

Have a different kind of freebie benefit card
TfL staff travel for free, as do their nominees, as do retired employees, also the engineers who maintain the ticketing equipment across the network, also some contractors, also Police Officers, Special Constables and Police Community Support Officers, also Armed Forces personnel (but only when in full uniform), also anyone with a Veterans Oyster photocard.

Use the DLR without touching in
DLR stations don't have ticket gates so you can always walk in and walk out at the other end, keeping your fingers crossed that nobody notices midway. DLR staff make regular ticket checks so you're taking quite a risk, also DLR stations are occasionally blockaded by huge teams of enforcement officers who will totally catch you out, but it's not going to happen this time... is it?

Only use ungated stations
A lot of tube stations have no ticket gates, or alternatively the gates are sometimes left open. These provide an excellent opportunity for free travel because you never ever get your ticket checked on the Underground, so why not just walk in? At least one ticket gate at Bromley-by-Bow is always open, for example, without a single member of staff ever keeping an eye on things. Of an evening the same is true at Plaistow too, so there's a journey anyone can make for nothing... and I bet they do.

Push brazenly through the ticket gates
If you have an inflated sense of self-entitlement you may choose to force open the ticket gates or dodge in behind a paying customer while grinning inwardly to yourself. Staff won't stop you because they're told not to, then all you have to do is get out at the other end and you've made yet another journey for free. This is of course illegal and there are whopping penalties if you're caught but you won't be, indeed I've not seen a ticket inspector on the Underground in years. For many Londoners, particularly younger feral types, the network is free all day every day.

Board a bus with zero intention of paying
Why pay for your bus ride like everyone else when you can ride for nothing? Concoct some cock and bull story about losing your card or struggle ineffectively with a beeping smartphone and the driver may just wave you on. Alternatively just stroll in and head to the back of the bus with a defiant sneer, as a tiny minority do, and save yourself the £1.75 that only losers pay. Some drivers do get impressively stroppy if you try that, refusing to move off until the miscreant alights, and well done to them. But on the whole if you have no intention of paying your way on a TfL journey then it doesn't cost a thing.

Five spots

2026-04-26T07:00:00.117+01:00

Five places I've been to in the last few days, and some thoughts.

Peckham - Rye Lane Market

I love a little arcade, a linear hideaway of trading units where you can buy anything and everything, the more independent the better. Such an arcade is Rye Lane Market in Peckham, a dogleg of glassfronted mini-bazaars stuffed with colourful goods and edibles. A quick wander reveals windowfuls of African tailoring, gold-looking jewellery, artificial flowers, dubious herbs, Peruvian hair, puffa jackets, churros, crystals, Caribbean vinyl, budget suitcases and of course an entire shop devoted to Body Shaper Girdles. I arrived so early that barely anything was open, just a hopeful guy in the phone repair shop and Heart Breakfast blaring out, so pick your moment carefully. But how wonderful that London retains proper retail catacombs like this, not just chain malls and overblown brand temples.

And I wondered, where else in London has chockablock grassroots arcades like this?
North: Seven Sisters Market
West: South Harrow Market
South: Rye Lane Market, Brixton Village
East: Wood Street Indoor Market (perhaps my favourite), East Ham (much depleted), Quadrant Arcade (Romford)

Enfield - Turkey Street Station

I went to Turkey Street and I saw these phrases plastered all over the station and I cringed.

» Create like a cactus without ration
» Another word for create is heavenly design like the North Star
» Even a unicorn can lose its powers when it stops trusting itself
» We are all weird so just knock your sadness out of your hands and bite into an apple
» Drain the beautiful struggle with play and learn to make your real life happy and happier

What awful twee platitudes, I thought, like a really crass set of motivational posters. Then I saw the logo of Arts Council England and wondered if this was an extension of the project that saw a sculpted fish/bird/squirrel/dog hybrid appear in the neighbouring park. Then I saw all the quotes were by small children - youngest 7, oldest 10 - which perhaps excused things slightly. Later I checked and it turns out these are micro-poems created by ten children at an after-school club convened by an arts studio focused on dyslexic and neurodivergent creativity as part of a project called Words Without Walls. This doesn't excuse the writing but I no longer feel the need to sigh, more to applaud, and this is why when it comes to art context is all-important.

Tolworth - Ewell Road

I found these plaques on a bench in Tolworth while I was waiting for the 418 bus. One's to Councillor H. G. Reynolds (1888-1959) 'from his friends in the Labour Movement'. From the tiny screed I learned he was born in 1888, became a Justice of the Peace in 1933, was elected to the council in 1934 and died in 1959. I presume he served the Municipal Borough of Surbiton, that being the local jurisdiction at the time. But I was more intrigued and unnerved by the other plaque which just said "Also to Mrs Alice Dorothy Reynolds who shared fully in his achievements". Poor lady, her husband gets all the plaudits and all it says about her is that she tagged along. There's not even a year of birth, just that she died three years after her husband (by that time sharing nothing).

I've tried digging further and believe Henry George Reynolds had been a railway clerk in his earlier years, a conscientious objector during WW1 and lived at 171 Douglas Street. I've also learned that the couple's eldest son Douglas rose to become the first Labour Mayor of Kingston, spent six years as chairman of the Friends of Richmond Park and was awarded an MBE by the Queen shortly before his death in 2017. But Alice's legacy is seemingly just as an erased hanger-on beside a bus stop in Tolworth, defined solely by her husband, and thank goodness society's moved on since then.

South Kensington - V&A galleries 70-73

If you prefer a more traditional V&A display than the sparse eclecticism of their new East outlier, try the Gilbert Collection in South Ken. It's also fresh but unveiled with barely a fanfare, a full-on upgrade to a second floor corridor and some offices to create a new home for some iconic baubles. Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert used their real estate fortune to snap up exquisite decorative objects, many in gold and silver, with the express intention of gifting them to the nation after their death. They must have signed some mammoth cheques to obtain this lot. A particular love of theirs were micromosaics, intricate designs of teensy tesserae many of which date back to Roman times, so expect at least a roomful of those. Ian has a full report, but basically do drop by next time you're doing a V&A circuit.

Bow - Tesco

Imagine my joy when I rounded the frozen vegetable cabinets in my local supermarket and found the following array of goodies in the seasonal goods aisle.

So many boxes of Creme Eggs, both the standard and medley versions, all Reduced to clear and massively cheaper than usual. The label confirmed the price for five chocolate fondant eggs had been £4, then £2 and was now £1, which is an absolute bargain. It equates to just 20p each whereas the cheapest you could buy a single egg before Easter was 70p at Aldi and in some branches of WH Smiths more than double that. I stocked up. But I didn't go too over the top because every Creme Egg has a Best Before date of 31st July, and if you hold on through the hot summer the central goo soon hardens and the entire joy of eating one fades away. I mention this Bow stash in case you feel the need to dash round and replenish your stocks. I reckon there were almost 1000 boxes left on Friday (blimey, somebody sure overstocked) so they can't all have gone yet.

Clickbait round-up

2026-04-25T08:00:00.002+01:00

Clickbait round-up

It's time for another of my weekly summaries of the worst clickbait headlines on London's needier news websites. Now there's no need to click through during the week because on Saturday I'll tell you what the thing is they hinted at but didn't tell you. It's always a huge disappointment anyway, even though it sounded potentially intriguing up front. Avoid the pop-ups and evil ads that spam your screen, just wait until Saturday and all will become clear!

» The posh commuter town 30 mins from London where average house prices have dropped by 29% (it's Weybridge)
» The 'secret' station that's missing from most TfL maps (it's Battersea Park)
» Life inside the ‘overlooked’ London area named one of the best places to live where locals say ‘it’s the place I’m happiest’ (it's Plumstead)
» The little known park near Tube station that's London's best place to see bluebells (it's Chalet Wood in Wanstead)
» The North London walking route perfect for families where you’re guaranteed to hit 10,000 steps (it's Capital Ring section 12)

» This majestic castle near London is one of the most beautiful places in Europe (it's Sissinghurst)
» I quit London to raise family in Ireland instead but I miss three things about the capital (they're public transport, sporting events and the weather)
» The 4 new Underground stations we may get in next 15 years and 2 we definitely won't (it's the Bakerloo extension and the Metropolitan extension)
» Exact date 20C heat will hit London in new forecast (it's Friday 1st May, allegedly)
» I tried Kew Gardens’ sunset yoga and it left me feeling something I haven’t in years (it's a profound sense of serenity and stillness)

» This iconic central London park is officially the best park in the city (it's Hyde Park, according to a student accommodation company)
» The UK's most remote station you can't drive to but it has direct trains to London (it's Corrour)
» London’s most gorgeous hidden garden is looking pretty in pink as its azaleas reach peak bloom (it's the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park)
» Is the London Overground affected by the April 2026 tube strikes this week? (no it isn't)
» Is Elizabeth line affected by April 2026 Tube strike? (no it isn't)

» This enchanting historic garden near London has just been named one of the most beautiful places in Europe (it's Sissinghurst again)
» One of London’s most historic train stations is being rebuilt with bold new features (it's Lea Bridge)
» I'm a Kent local — Londoners visiting the county this spring must do 1 thing (walk from Deal to Kingsdown)
» One of London’s most iconic landmarks is officially set to undergo a huge transformation (it's Smithfield Market)
» This 17th-century coastal inn is the perfect escape from the capital city (it's The George in Yarmouth, IoW)

» This immersive ‘time capsule’ in Spitalfields is one of London’s best kept secrets (it's Denis Severs House)
» 90s boyband star is now living very different life as a roofer in London (it's John from E17)
» This historic Holborn townhouse has just been named the best place in London for a solo day out (it's Sir John Soane's Museum, according to a railway company)
» This charming West London garden is home to a gorgeous wisteria tunnel (it's Eastcote House Gardens)
» Heathrow Airport says 'allow extra time' at security over common item (it's powdered food)

What I can't tell you is how Katie, Sam and Will sleep at night.

Tower Hamlets Mayoral election round-up

2026-04-25T07:00:00.108+01:00

Tower Hamlets Mayoral election round-up

All nine candidates for Mayor of Tower Hamlets get to contribute to a booklet posted to all the addresses on the electoral roll, and mine's just arrived. I've read it, also the candidates' websites, and my word there are some ridiculous claims that should debar every single one of them from winning. Many also have many positive points but I'm focusing solely on the bad, thoughtless, inept stuff.... in alphabetical order of surname.

Zami Ali Tower Hamlets Independents (manifesto)
• AI systems embedded across all council operations. (oh god)
• The shift to an AI-enabled council means every manual process replaced by technology reduces cost and enhances human efficiency. (oh god)
• Every community centre refurbished as a Technology & Skills Hub. (the man's obsessed)
• £1 billion identified in procurement, waste, duplicate contracts, and inefficient systems. Recovered and reinvested, that is £15,000 in service value for every family in Tower Hamlets over four years. (but it's only £8000 for every household because Zami is focusing on families at the expense of single people)
• £0 Salary - 100 Day's Of Mayoral Pay Redirected For You (if you can't do apostrophes, you can't run a council)

Mohammed Hannan Liberal Democrats
• Being able to use your local train station is a basic right that everyone deserves, whether its disabled people, those with mobility issues, or even those with buggies and young children. That Wapping, Shadwell, and other stations on the Windrush line continue to be inaccessible is not acceptable. (these stations don't have step-free access because they're Victorian, both already have lifts it's just the last 20-odd steps that can't be wheeled, if it was easy to shoehorn access into the extremely restricted space they'd have done it when the stations were upgraded 20 years ago, you're just moaning about something you can't change)

Hirra Khan Adeogun Green (manifesto)
• Solidarity with people of Palestine, calling out the UK’s role in genocide (the current Mayor's been doing that for years and it's changed nothing)
• Cheaper energy bills for at least 2000 households to start. (wow, what do the other 118,000 of us do in the meantime)
• Implement a new 'Pass-through Traffic Charge' for heavy non-domestic vehicles. This will not impact Tower Hamlets residents and those who work in the borough and will only apply to vehicles passing through without engaging with local businesses or residents. (that'd just send a ton of lorries through the Silvertown Tunnel rather than the Blackwall Tunnel, you muppets)

Hugo Pierre Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition
• A socialist mayor would bring unions and the community together in a mass campaign to win more money from the government. (cloudcuckooland, mate)
• Scrap developers’ greedy plans, build 100% council homes. (a worthy aspiration, but realistically nothing would get built for years while all the existing plans changed)
• Campaign for free public transport. (I think you've misunderstood the powers of a Mayor)

Dominic Nolan Conservative
• I will see houses are allocated fairly. Houses for local people. More homes in the right places. (Dominic's text is vague, detail-less and written as if for ten year-olds)
• Tower Hamlets reportedly has the lowest recycling rate in England. I (you've sent your document to the printers with the end of a sentence missing, sheesh)

Sirajul Islam Labour (manifesto)
• The recent Government Best Value inspection made clear that Tower Hamlets needs fresh leadership to end the chaos. (that's not actually what it said)
• Restore pride in our streets (that's never going to happen)
• Reinstate the Victoria Park fireworks (you can't afford to bring back everything the current Mayor's scrapped)
• Remember: Only Labour can beat the current administration (you can show all the bar charts you like, but technically that's very false)

John Bullard Reform UK
• Tower Hamlets’ finances are broken and only a Reform UK Mayor will fix it. (that's not true, Reform don't have a monopoly here)
• PUT LONDONERS FIRST FOR SOCIAL HOUSING (I'm not sure you're allowed to do that)
• OPPOSE HOUSING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN HOTELS (well you can, but it's central government that decides this)
• END ULEZ AND THE WAR ON DRIVERS (we don't care, only 34% of households here have a car)

Lutfur Rahman Aspire (manifesto)
• Since being elected Mayor in 2022, my priority has been to make Tower Hamlets work for all. (I don't think you've included all of us)
• We are also proposing a brand new Whitechapel leisure centre with a new swimming pool. (this is the sole future policy amongst 900 words of what Lutfur's done already)
• Introduce a Public Health Service that is COVID-ready (hang on, your 'Manifesto' is just cut and pasted from 2022)
• I ASK YOU TO CONTINUE TO PUT YOUR TRUST IN ME (reminds me of Kaa in the Jungle Book)
• "Lutfur and Aspire have my full support, showing us what is possible when local government prioritises social justice" Jeremy Corbyn MP (I'm not sure that's the top endorsement you think it is)

Terence McGrenera Independent
• What I propose for Tower Hamlets is to establish its own lottery, sell the idea to other London boroughs and help them to combine in a London wide organisation. It would be called THE LONDON LOTTERY. The proceeds would help to set up a property company to build, buy and manage homes for rent on a non-profit basic. (this is your only policy, you literally have nothing else, and it requires working with other boroughs so it's never going to happen, you're focused but delusional)

V&A East

2026-04-24T07:00:00.538+01:00

V&A East opened on the East Bank in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on Saturday. It's the latest outpost of the V&A empire after South Kensington, Bethnal Green, Dundee and the big Storehouse on the other side of the Park. It's also very good, also architecturally startling, also mostly empty. I visited midweek when it's quieter and took over 160 photos, which I've since managed to whittle down to 40, of which here you're seeing eight. To see the whole lot head to Flickr where you can experience the whole building as a walkthrough, also there's only so much I can say in words and you really need to see the place, ideally in real life. [40 photos]

Location: 107 Carpenters Rd, E20 2AR [map]
Open: 10am - 6pm (until 10pm on Thursdays and Saturdays)
Admission: free
Three word summary: eclectic creative stack
Website: vam.ac.uk/east
Time to set aside: at least an hour

Let's tour the five floors from the bottom up.

Lower Ground

If you enter from the waterfront, past the enormous black bronze statue, you arrive on a floor that's mostly occupied by operational backrooms so there's not much to see. The remaining public space is occupied by Cafe Jikoni, its menu inspired by rich flavours from immigrant cuisine. It seems a well-chosen cornerstone for the museum, not the fanciest but not cheap either, and spills out onto an external terrace. If not seeking refreshment expect a V&A greeter to point you towards the lifts or stairs... and blimey these staircases are quite something.

They weave in a distinctly angular manner all up the front and side of the building, the handrails sometimes protruding at an odd angle to negotiate an architectural contortion. Occasionally you might spot an artwork stuffed in an alcove, and at one point you find yourself behind the giant V&A on the outside of the building looking down on people entering. The stairs remind me of the Blavatnik building at Tate Modern, not quite as broad but creating a similarly irregular ascent. As such they're exceptionally photogenic, especially those connecting the lower floors, so watch out for lingering folk with cameras frustratedly hoping that everyone else gets out of the way.

Upper Ground

This is the hub of the museum and has its own entrance connecting directly to the rest of the East Bank. It also houses one of the two free galleries, a large space entitled 'Why We Make', the name emblazoned in white neon above two swing doors. What greets you beyond is an extremely eclectic collection of objects from puffy pink dresses to magazine covers and postwar tapestries to William Morris football shirts. Spangly tights make a central showing, also conical purple headgear, 17th century German marquetry and portrait-oriented videos. It wouldn't be the V&A without a row of peculiar chairs, and yes there they are on top of a set of extraordinary furniture designed by a bloke from Hackney called Ron.

I think there are underlying themes like 'Our Place in the World' and 'Breaking Boundaries' but unless you bother to read the text on the wall you'd never know. All eras are included but with a definite nod towards more recent creations. They're also more diverse than a stuffy west London museum might display, so as well as making you think "ooh that's nice" they should also make you think. Arguably it's a tad sparse because they could have fitted a lot more in but on a busy weekend afternoon you'll be glad of the extra circulation space. Rather more squashed is the inevitable shop, its contents exceptionally tasteful all round and with some items under a pound to balance out the inevitable coffee table fodder.

First Floor

Up again to Why We Make room two. This is more of the same, again with an emphasis on the power of creativity to evoke transformation, packed out with the utterly different. One corner's all about protest so has Solidarność posters, another focuses on the power of recycling including a replacement handle for broken teacups invented 100 years ago in Balsall Heath. I think the theme in the far corner is "even poor people can have nice stuff" although this wasn't the terminology used. Reassuringly everything has explanatory text, while some objects come with tetchy touchscreens or liftable loudspeakers you're supposed to listen to, even if I never do. I also didn't last more than a few minutes in the mini-cinema out back, but if you perch and watch the entire programme this could extend your visit considerably.

Keep going past the toilets and there's what looks like an emergency exit but is in fact the access to a first floor terrace. If you don't spot it you're not really missing much, it's a peculiar hemmed-in space where the best view is to the rear towards Stratford's newest wall of office blocks. It also offers minor trainspotting opportunities as the DLR and Overground swoosh by in an artificial cutting, but it's really not worth coming for that. And back to the stairs...

Second Floor

This is where the paid-for exhibitions go. For the opening months that's The Music Is Black, a celebration of British influence on music and culture - a pitch perfect start. It skips from Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to Stormzy via Winifred Atwell and Joan Armatrading and promises iconic objects, evocative sound experiences and multimedia installations. It's also £22.50 to get in, rising to £24.50 at weekends, unless you're fortunate enough to be under 26 in which case the fee is a much more reasonable £11. I think what put me off more than the price was the realisation that the exhibition space must be the same size as the two galleries underneath, thus not exactly enormous nor necessarily time consuming. I must however applaud whoever stocked the shop alongside, the museum's second purchasing opportunity, because the exhibition-themed goodies were spot on.

Third Floor

One final stepped ascent leads to the finest freebie of all, the top floor terrace. This large irregular space faces the heart of the Olympic Park, bang opposite the stadium, offering a stunning 180° view across the treetops. Look down the ribbon of the City Mill River and you can see all the way to Shooters Hill. Rotate to tick off the Orbit, Abba Arena and Docklands, then the aforementioned West Ham ground, then the skyscrapers of the City. Keep turning to see the hutches they're building in Hackney Wick, the Copper Box and the mast at Ally Pally... and make the most of the last two because when they eventually start building flats in the gap beside V&A East all that will disappear. It's just a treat to come up here to be honest, although if you bring toddlers be aware they won't see a thing above the wall so will need to make their own entertainment.

Hurrah there's one final bonus gallery and its inaugural exhibition made me cheer. This is Dispersal by Marion Davies and Debra Rapp who spent 2005-2007 documenting the businesses and landscapes about to be wiped away to create the Olympic Park. Their photographs show girders being coated at Parkes Galvanising, salmon being deboned at H Forman & Son and some fairly unpleasant things happening to meat, all at locations I remember viscerally up and down this slice of the Lower Lea Valley. What's galling though is how few photographs are on display in an absolutely enormous space, a couple of wallsworth of small annotated frames, almost like a presentational afterthought. I suspect the main use for this top floor hideaway will be as an events venue after hours, the hospitality pièce de résistance being the opportunity to clink glasses on the terrace outside, hence daytimes are a bit blank.

and back down again

V&A East is simultaneously a triumph and a wasted opportunity. It brings a world class museum to the East Bank, indeed a second if you count their Storehouse that opened last year - finally a building worth travelling to see inside. Its cultural offer is suitably targeted for the location and well pitched for the younger audience it hopes to attract. It's fun to explore, predominantly free to access and a memorable lump of architecture to boot. But I was struck by how much of the interior was empty space, not just the stairwell cavities and capacious landings but also across the walls and within the galleries themselves. It doesn't pay to be too cluttered but they could have scattered plenty more culture throughout V&A East, be that more exhibits, extra artworks or just additional stuff. It's a heck of a lot but it could be a lot more.

There are five times as many photos over at Flickr.
Hopefully the next best thing to taking a look for yourself.

Greatest London death tolls

2026-04-23T07:00:00.033+01:00

Greatest London death tolls

Disease
» 1349: Black Death (over 20,000 deaths)
[also 1361, 1375, 1382, 1390, 1399, 1405, 1411, 1426, 1433, 1438, 1463, 1471, 1479 etc]
» 1499: plague (20,000 deaths)
» 1563: plague again (20,000 deaths)
» 1592: plague again (20,000 deaths)
» 1603: plague again (30,000 deaths)
» 1625: plague again (35,000 deaths)
» 1636: plague again (10,000 deaths)
» 1665: Great Plague (almost 100,000) (15% of the population) (7165 in the worst week)
» 1831: cholera (7,000 deaths)
» 1848: cholera's back (14,000 deaths)
» 1854: cholera again (11,000 deaths) (see John Snow)
» 1866: cholera's last appearance (4300 deaths)
» 1918/9: influenza (18,000 deaths)
» 2020-2: Covid (20,000 deaths confirmed)

Violence
» 61: Boudicca sacks Londinium (Tacitus claims 70,000 deaths)
» 1381: Peasants Revolt (1500 deaths)
» 1450: Jack Cade's Rebellion (240 deaths)
» 1780: Gordon Riots (850 deaths and 25 hanged)
» 1917/18: WW1 zeppelin & biplane air raids (670 deaths)
» 1940/41: the Blitz (40,000 deaths) (worst night 10/11 May 1941, 1436 dead)
» 1944/5: doodlebugs (V1s 5500 deaths, V2s 2700 deaths)
» 1970s-90s: IRA attacks (62 deaths)
» 2005: 7/7 bombings (56 deaths)

Weather and natural phenomena
» 1235: famine (20,000 deaths)
» 1258: famine (volcano in Indonesia) (15,000 deaths)
» 1580: earthquake (1 death)
» 1703: Great Storm (21 deaths on land and 22 drowned)
» 1952: Great Smog (estimated 10,000 deaths)

Fire
» 1212: Great Fire of London (3000 deaths)
» 1666: Great Fire of London (6 deaths)
» 1890: Forest Gate Residential School (26 deaths)
» 1903: Colney Hatch Asylum (52 deaths)
» 1980: Denmark Place club (37 deaths)
» 1987: King's Cross fire (31 deaths)
» 2017: Grenfell Tower (72 deaths)

Gunpowder
» 1650: Tower Street (67 deaths)
» 1917: Silvertown (69 deaths)

Collapse & crush
» 1623: Fatal Vespers (95 deaths)
» 1867: ice skating, Regent's Park (40 deaths)
» 1943: Bethnal Green station (173 deaths)

River
» 1867: Princess Alice collision (at least 640 deaths)
» 1898: Thames Ironworks slipway launch (35 deaths)
» 1928: Thames flood (14 deaths)
» 1989: Marchioness sinking (51 deaths)

Transport
🚂 1947: South Croydon (32 deaths)
✈️ 1948: Heathrow (20 deaths)
✈️ 1948: Northwood (39 deaths)
✈️ 1950: Heathrow (28 deaths)
✈️ 1950: Mill Hill (28 deaths)
🚂 1952: Harrow & Wealdstone (112 deaths)
🚂 1957: St John's (90 deaths)
🚆 1967: Hither Green (49 deaths)
🚇 1975: Moorgate (43 deaths)
🚆 1988: Clapham Junction (35 deaths)
🚆 1999: Ladbroke Grove (31 deaths)

• My main source is the book London's Disasters by John Withington (from Tower Hamlets libraries)
• Links also to Wikipedia and other relevant websites

• Death tolls are for London only (UK figures here)
• Large numbers of deaths are approximate
• Only death tolls of 20 or more are included (with a few exceptions)
• Omissions likely, errors assured (do not base your essay or dissertation on my data)

Most devoted readers

2026-04-23T06:00:00.007+01:00

👨‍🧔‍👩👴 Where are this blog's most devoted readers?

When a reader drops by, my stats package briefly records how many times they've visited the blog and roughly where they're from. I could thus attempt to use this ongoing data to discover who's visited diamond geezer the most. I've visited 2914 times, apparently, starting from some unknown date because this is all very opaque. 2914 visits would be the equivalent of once a day for eight years, or alternatively 8 times a day for year, either of which is a heck of a lot of visits. So who can beat that?

My stickiest reader has visited over 5000 times, which is ridiculous. They're from somewhere in the UK, probably in Wembley. A regular checker of the comments I believe.
Also beating my total are readers from Croydon (4800+), Luton (4500+), Aldershot (4000+), Sydenham (3600+), Welwyn Garden City (3500+), South Croydon (3300+) and London (3100+). Hello you.

Below that in the 2000s we have Kettering, Wolverhampton, Barnet, Massachusetts, Wembley, Woolwich, Dunstable, Bromley, Reading, Tower Hamlets, Redhill, Twickenham, Bury St Edmunds, Brentford, Harrow, Mauritius, Oxford, Hornchurch and Thamesmead. Hello you too.
And in the high 1000s Lambeth, Birmingham, Hovedstaden, Rotherham, Crowborough, Slough, Tadley, Harrow, Bristol, Feltham, Orpington, Gourock, Rayleigh, Hendon, Barking, Milton Keynes, Amersham, Berlin, Pontefract and Rotterdam.

I have no idea who you are, nor should you assume that if your place of residence appears then that reader is you.
Also not everyone leaves a consistent cookie trail so you might not be here at all.
But thanks everyone for coming back so incredibly frequently, whoever and wherever you are.

Held at a red signal

2026-04-22T07:00:00.003+01:00

When trains are running, you hear this on the tube a lot.

This train is being held at a red signal and should be moving shortly.

If you think you've heard it more often recently, that's because it's being played more often.

This train is being held at a red signal and should be moving shortly.

But only on certain trains.

This train is being held at a red signal and should be moving shortly.

And here's why.

There are, unsurprisingly, rules about how often tube drivers must play delay messages. Some drivers might otherwise make them too often and some might never make them, and that would never do.

One reason for making delay announcements is to provide information about the ongoing journey but the chief reason is customer reassurance. Some passengers get nervous when a train stops in a tunnel, especially those who travel infrequently and aren't used to the fact this often happens. They won't be thinking "ah yes, there's probably another train ahead", they might instead be conjuring up all kinds of worst case scenarios, so it makes sense to put them at their ease.

Up until the start of this month, the rule was this.

The driver must have made a verbal announcement...
...if a delay between stations reaches 30 seconds.
...if a delay at the platform reaches 90 seconds.

Train operators know this as the 30:90 rule.

It's shorter between stations because that's where any delay stands out as unusual. And it's longer at platforms because dwell times can sometimes be longer than 30 seconds, also anyone nervous or inconvenienced can obviously get off.

Note that the announcement had to be verbal, so any driver merely pressing the button for an automated announcement had technically misperformed.

However hearing-impaired passengers would have been disadvantaged by a verbal announcement, potentially missing it completely, and that's not treating people equally. The introduction of in-carriage displays thus presents a way to mitigate this, additionally presenting a scrolling message, hence the change in the rules.

As of the start of this month, the new rule is more complicated.

If a delay between stations reaches 30 seconds, the driver must have made an automated announcement.
If a delay between stations reaches 90 seconds, the driver must also have made a verbal announcement.

If a delay at the platform reaches 90 seconds, the driver must have made an automated announcement followed by verbal announcement.

That's two announcements every time a delay reaches 90 seconds, and that's why you might be hearing these announcements more often.

An automated announcement followed a verbal announcement ticks all boxes equalities-wise, specifically for those who either cannot see or cannot hear. Technically an automated announcement would be sufficient but TfL know that passengers find the driver's voice more reassuring hence this is included too.

It can all get a bit silly when the driver presses the button just as the red signal changes, hence you hear 'This train is being held at a red signal and should be moving shortly' just as the train moves off. It can also get a bit annoying if you're the kind of person niggled by excessive messaging, in which case best remember you are not the target audience and perhaps calm down a bit.

Also the new rule only applies on trains where the rolling stock includes a visual display. Bakerloo line trains are too old, for example, also those on the Piccadilly, Northern and Jubilee. In these cases a verbal message is still deemed more reassuring, also there's no point in playing an automated message because nothing scrolls past when you do. Trains on these four lines thus continue to follow the old rule while trains on the other seven lines follow the new.

In summary...

	Between stations	At platforms
Central Circle District H & City Metropolitan Victoria W & City (new rule)	30 seconds an automated announcement 90 seconds a verbal announcement	90 seconds an automated announcement followed by a verbal announcement
Bakerloo Jubilee Northern Piccadilly (old rule)	30 seconds a verbal announcement	90 seconds a verbal announcement

Arguably this is all a bit late because many tube lines have had visual display screens for years. In particular the government introduced a set of Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations in 2010 to set legal standards for disabled passengers and TfL have been relying on a legal opt-out ever since. But better late than never, hence the change on 1st April, hence the increased number of announcements where these can be made.

Intriguingly TfL employ market research company Ipsos to check that drivers are making the correct announcements. They act as 'mystery shoppers', awarding green letters (and special badges) to drivers who meet the standard and red letters to those who don't. Imagine getting paid to ride the tube, listening out for messages and keeping your fingers crossed that at some point the train gets delayed.

It's also worth saying that many lines don't actually have red signals any more, they've been done away with thanks to upgrades to electronic signalling. But TfL still like to tell us that trains are being held at red signals even though they're not because it helps to keep the announcements simple. When you might now be hearing them twice, that's increasingly important.

This train is being held at a red signal and should be moving shortly.

If you're hearing impaired hopefully these changes will benefit you. If you're visually impaired this now gives you two chances to listen. If you're hearing impaired and visually impaired sorry, you remain outside the loop. And if unnecessary announcements annoy you just keep your headphones in, keep your eyes on your phone and you won't notice anything has changed.

ERII 100

2026-04-21T02:40:00.113+01:00

Queen Elizabeth II was born 100 years ago today, not in a palace but above a Chinese restaurant in Mayfair. Obviously it wasn't a Chinese restaurant at the time. The following year the family moved to a new home in a luxury international hotel on Piccadilly. Obviously it wasn't a luxury international hotel at the time. And when it suddenly became clear that her father was about to be king, the whole family moved into a tourist attraction at the foot of The Mall. At least that's still there, even if our centenarian monarch has sadly passed away.

The Queen was born at 17 Bruton Street W1, a Georgian townhouse with pillared stucco frontage. The house in Mayfair belonged to the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, better known as the Queen Mother's parents, who'd moved here from St James's Square five years earlier. The family was suddenly thrust into the limelight when their youngest daughter accepted the hand in marriage of the King's son, the marriage of Prince Albert and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon taking place at Westminster Abbey in 1923. Financially the couple were perfectly capable of buying their own home, but it was being redecorated as the pregnancy drew to a close hence the temporary Bruton Street stay. Our former Queen was delivered by Caesarean section at 2.40am on Wednesday 21st April 1926, with the Home Secretary present in the house as tradition demanded to ensure that no baby-swapping took place.

The house in Bruton Street alas no longer stands and it all started with the Canadians. In 1930 the Canadian Pacific Railway Company purchased fifteen houses on the south side of the street with the intention of replacing them by a hotel, then changed their minds and used number 17 as their London office instead. In 1937 the new owner demolished the entire flank with plans for a 44m-tall office block which would have been outstanding at the time. A Daily Telegraph journalist bore witness to the destruction, observing the collapse of the rear wall and watching "the Palladian columns falling before the pickaxes". The eventual reconstruction had just seven storeys and was one of London's first major reinforced concrete buildings. It's since been drably reclad but still goes by the name Berkeley Square House, and remains in stark contrast to the characterfully Georgian style across the street.

Thus any tourist visiting number 17 for its regal connections faces a sharp disappointment. Whichever room it was wherein the Queen breathed her first has long been replaced by a box in the sky, and all that indicates the site's historical significance is a pair of plaques, one from Silver Jubilee year and another from the Diamond. The original plaque is more ornate, chiselled into what looks like gilded slate, while the latter is a more mundane green roundel forelock-tuggingly placed by the local council. By contrast immediately beneath are a dry riser and a row of heaters, this the designated outdoor smoking area for the Chinese restaurant that now claims number seventeen.

It's quite a restaurant, specifically Hakkasan, a formerly-Michelin-starred Cantonese restaurant. It opened here in 2010 and the interior designer clearly had the word 'black' on his mind during its creation. It's also seriously expensive with duck and caviar heavily featured, the fish courses priced at £50 apiece and the addition of a bowl of beansprout noodles adding £20 to the bill. But then this is Mayfair, as you can tell by the car showrooms on the corner, the flogging of Bentleys and Bugattis now replacing the Queen's first neighbours. The office block recognises its place in history by hanging a prominent portrait of Her Majesty in the foyer, specifically the startling lenticular print Lightness of Being by Chris Levine. But don't expect a centenary party here this evening, nor a commemorative Elizabeth stir-fry, but if your pocket's deep enough you can always book a table and raise a glass to the famous baby born upstairs.

Not long after the birth the Duke and Duchess of York headed off on a royal tour Down Under, a massive undertaking which took them away from home for six months. By the time they returned, relieving the nanny, their house purchase had gone through and they had somewhere new to live. This was 145 Piccadilly, a spacious townhouse located amid a terrace of similar white-fronted properties at the foot of the street near the junction with Park Lane. It wasn't quite a palace but it was certainly luxurious with 25 bedrooms, a ballroom, plenty of hanging space for tapestries and a balcony out front for occasional public appearances. Princess Elizabeth was allocated the entire fourth floor, and the back garden was communal so she occasionally got to mix with the neighbours on the extensive lawns. At the age of four she was joined by a sister, Margaret, and of course a lot of their time was spent elsewhere as the family darted from Scottish castle to royal retreat to meet a lifestyle of obligation. But for ten years 'home' for the young princess was a civilian property overlooking Hyde Park Corner, until the abdication crisis forced the family to move on.

They didn't want to leave but protocol insisted, also it was just as well that they did. In an air raid on 7th October 1940 the house was substantially destroyed, the back garden of the ruin being taken over as an allotment run by the Girls' Training Corps. It was the only house in the terrace to be lost. This did however make things easier for Westminster's road planners when it came to upgrading Park Lane to a dual carriageway in 1959. The obvious place to knock a gap through to Hyde Park Corner was right here, so 145-148 faced the wrecking ball while 144 and Apsley House were left intact. This means that the Queen's childhood home has been summarily replaced by the southbound carriageway of the A4202, specifically all four lanes of traffic just before the lights at Hyde Park Corner plus the pavement alongside. So if you've ever driven to the southern end of Park Lane or caught a bus this way or even walked it, you have in fact passed directly through the Queen's childhood home.

That's not the outcome normally stated, the general consensus being that number 145 was instead replaced by the InterContinental London Hotel. This five star hospitality behemoth opened in 1975 and was designed by Harlow architect Sir Frederick Gibberd, hence has a little more character than your average modern hotel. Alternate windows jut out in boxy ribs above an extended ground floor of thin pillars and glass, while off-white concrete gives the building an airy touch on the skyline. Only an exclusive few are allowed inside the seventh floor Club lounge, whereas everyday guests get to dine in the ground floor restaurant and they're actually getting the more historic deal. It even says so on the poster outside.

The odd thing about the Wellington Lounge is that is juts diagonally into the pavement a couple of times, these alcoves where the staff line up their breakfast juices and where a few lucky punters sit. It's these protrusions that enter the footprint of 145 Piccadilly and pretty much nothing else, almost as if they were deliberately designed so that the hotel could claim its royal heritage. Should you ever take up the InterContinental on its Afternoon Tea offer be sure to try and grab one of the tables closest to the window, otherwise your £85 is historically wasted and you might as well have brought a takeaway and eaten it on the pavement outside.

Of course after December 1936, when Elizabeth's father found himself suddenly elevated to the monarchy, the family swiftly moved into Buckingham Palace instead. It was to be her London home for the next eighty-three years, which is pretty impressive for the occupation of a single property, even if she spent the majority of her time elsewhere. But her three West End homes made Her Majesty very much a Londoner - by birth, in childhood and through a life of service - and it all started with a scream above a Chinese restaurant 100 years ago today.

Bishop's Stortford

2026-04-20T07:00:00.235+01:00

Gadabout: BISHOP'S STORTFORD

Bishop's Stortford is the largest town in East Hertfordshire and immensely commutable, be you a City financier or Ryanair cabin crew. It lies three miles west of Stansted Airport, immediately adjacent to the M11 and is blessed with a fast connection to Liverpool Street. The town started out as a riverside settlement by a ford and soon after 1066 was purchased by a bishop, hence the name. As well as its bishop it also has a castle, has been visited by kings and queens and was home to several knights of the realm, so that's all the major chess pieces covered ♗♜♔♛♘. Additionally it has two pawn shops ♟♙ but that's probably pushing the allusion too far. [Discover Bishop's Stortford] [history] [10 photos]

If planning a day out it's always a good sign when a town has both a museum and a Tourist Information Office. I'm not quite sure how many tourists are genuinely expected to turn up in Bishop's Stortford - maybe air travellers who've got off the train one stop early - but there is indeed a decent amount to see. But do make tracks to the little shop because amongst the jars of honey and I❤️BS mugs are a decent collection of leaflets including the glossy town guide and four freely-grabbable town trails. The latter put most towns of a similar size to shame, indeed if you follow all f o u r you'll have seen pretty much everything with a good idea of its history, suggesting the council very much wants you to linger here. I did just that.

To picture the layout of Bishop's Stortford think of a large circle with the southeastern quarter removed. All the oldest stuff is in the centre with successive hoops of development added since, now all the way out to the ring road that defines the town's perimeter. Straight down the middle go the railway and the river, which of course is the River Stort, although unusually the river is named after the town rather than the other way round. The missing quadrant is all Green Belt and rural, this because it's in Essex rather than Hertfordshire. The M11 runs tangentially to the east and beyond that is the budget friendly hub of Stansted Airport, its runway thankfully angled away from the town. I think I only looked up twice.

The oldest structure in town is Waytemore Castle, imprecisely dated but probably from the 1080s, topped off by a rectangular keep during the reign of Henry I. The mound is 13m high and a classic Norman motte, but these days just a grassy lump with remnants of flint defences around the upper rim. The earthwork is surrounded by low railings to prevent excess access, but a set of fifty-or-so steps ascends one side so up I trooped for a view across the town. It wasn't quite as quiet as usual up top thanks to the Friends of Castle Park undertaking bagfuls of scrub clearance and a group of Stortford lowlife drinking from dubious cans. But I still enjoyed scrambling round what's left of the ramparts, admiring the many spring flowers on the slopes and spotting Waitrose in the near distance.

As usual Christianity got in early and planted a church on high ground, in this case at the top of the High Street. St Michael's has roots in Saxon times but the current building is early 15th century Perpendicular and the widely-visible spire considerably more recent. I've seen more exciting interiors but I liked the board with the list of vicars which starts with "A Priest (name unknown) 1086" and then rattles through a heck of a lot of men called John. Remember the name Francis William Rhodes from 1849 because we'll get to his famous son in four paragraphs time. Stortford's other tall buildings are the silos at the Allinson's bakery, a surprisingly central industrial site, which alas doesn't mill at weekends so I can't tell you how good it smells. It is however a great improvement on the maltings and breweries that the town used to be famous for, but also notorious for.

The most imposing of the town's other buildings is probably the Corn Exchange, typical of market towns of this era (which in this case was 1828). This swooshing classical building evolved into the town's magistrates courts, then fell into disrepair and narrowly avoided demolition in the 1960s. These days it appears to contain two restaurants and a betting shop, with an upper terrace where a trio of residents were enjoying something alcoholic in the sun. Several considerably older buildings are scattered nearby, many of them former pubs including the half-timbered Black Lion which is medieval and the George Inn where Charles I dropped by in 1629. Even the Tourist Information Centre used to be the Reindeer Inn, a lewd dive described by Samuel Pepys who we know to have partaken in the 'entertainment' provided by landlady Betty Aynsworth.

Bishops's Stortford owes a lot of its early growth to being halfway between London and Cambridge. Numerous coaching inns sprang up and were well used, at least until 1670 when the town's smelly reputation caused a fresh bypass to be built on the other side of the river. The new overnight hotspot thus became Hockerill Crossroads, each quadrant occupied by a separate beer/stabling establishment of which only The Cock Inn survives. As for The Red Lion that's now an Indian restaurant, the Crown Inn is a dental surgery and the Coach & Horses is a demolished gap beside an estate agent. Apparently Dick Turpin was a regular visitor to The Cock, which is credible given he grew up across the border in Essex, but if he turned up today I'm not sure Sky Sports and a night of ukulele music would be his thing.

The town's shops are pretty good, as you'd expect given it's a long drive to Harlow or Chelmsford. Anywhere with a population under 40,000 with a Marks & Spencer must be hitting above its weight. The main drag is Potter Street where Boots and Waterstones bump up against B&M Bargains, and which annoyingly doubles up as part of the one-way system because an ancient street pattern leaves no room for easy circulation. The town's covered mall is Jackson Square, a 70s replacement for superfluous council offices which last month extended with anchor tenant TKMaxx so must be doing well. For sit-down dining you want North Street where a lot of the town's older buildings are, while those with disposable income to burn are catered for in the twee zigzag of Florence Walk, almost like they saw you coming.

Famous residents of Bishop's Stortford include actress Lynda Baron, DJ Greg James and singer Sam Smith. But by far the most consequential was the seventh child of the aforementioned vicar at St Michael's, namely Cecil Rhodes the diamond merchant, politician and apartheid-enabler. The family lived at Netteswell House on South Street, a building since sanctified as a tribute to his greatness in the days of Empire - come see the birthplace of the founder of Rhodesia! It's since been absorbed into a considerably more modern arts centre, a weird hybrid where touring comics play to packed houses in one part and the older wing houses two floors of the town's museum. It's a collection that bats above the average.

Cecil's story is told in considerable detail in the very room where he was born, which adds an extra frisson. The displays are commendably free of jingoism but also unexpectedly light on criticism, suggesting they've not been updated for some time. I kept reading ("founded De Beers") ("ruled the country") ("restricted voting rights") expecting to see some recognition of a tarnished reputation, or indeed any focus on the native population, but none was forthcoming. They have at least removed his name from the building, originally the Rhodes Memorial Hall, then the Rhodes Memorial Museum and Commonwealth Centre, later the Rhodes Centre and now the entirely anodyne South Mill Arts Centre.

Elsewhere I was fascinated by the tale of the Gilbey family who lived on Windhill and were big names in the stagecoach industry before that went bust. But Sir Walter Gilbey created an even greater fortune in the 1880s by importing inexpensive wines which tempted the middle classes away from ale, and also upsold Gilbey's Gin to create the global brand we know today. On the upper balcony I admired the Bishop's Stortford Mural, an 8-metre-long embroidery sewn locally in the 1980s, also the ancient stocks rescued from a local village, also a 'contemporary reminiscence box' created by local teenagers. The latter contains nothing you would have picked in your youth, instead showcasing objects including a liquid eyeliner brush, a PlayStation game, an empty Amazon package and a can of carbonated lemon drink.

But the town's finest attraction, for residents and visitors alike, has to be the River Stort itself. It's special because it's navigable, this because the town's malt trade was suffering in the 1760s so an entrepreneur called George Jackson funded a transformation from river to pseudo-canal. It didn't make him exceptionally rich but it did turbo-charge business locally and earn him a knighthood. The towpath means it's extremely easy to walk alongside and can be tracked a lot further than your average river, potentially all the way to Hoddesdon. In the town centre it feels a bit hemmed in, and by the station is now overlooked by 740 newbuild flats on the site of the old goods yard. This stretch is quite joggy, doggy and cycly, so do keep going.

Beyond the railway line is a rumbling weir to cross and reedy woodland to walk through, then the first of the Stort Navigation's locks at South Mill. The Canal & River Trust have done a fine job of installing information boards all the way down, so you'll discover where best to look for pike, what's left of the millwheel and why the Minister of Transport turned up in 1924. I merely walked as far as Rushy Mead Nature Reserve, a tranquil scrape of sedge beds and flooded alder, but it's only an hour further to Sawbridgeworth if you're not too tired from exploring Bishop's Stortford instead. Which as I hope I've proved above is clearly worth doing. Just because it's the commuter belt doesn't mean it isn't innately fascinating.

Stroudley Walk redux

2026-04-19T07:00:00.415+01:00

Stroudley Walk has reopened! It's been four miserable years.

Memo to non-Bow residents
Stroudley Walk is a pedestrianised street in Bromley-by-Bow near Bow Church, the church. It was redeveloped in the 1980s, exceptionally unattractively, wiping away all but three of the original Victorian buildings. Formerly it was the top end of Devons Road but they renamed it Stroudley Walk when adding the hideous brick colonnades. It's just been redeveloped again.

I went to the pharmacy on Friday afternoon and noticed most of the hoardings had been removed, with just a feeble plastic tape to keep people out. When I came back out a few minutes later a man was rolling up the aforementioned tape, and I asked "have you actually finished?" and he said yes. I'm not sure we had much of a language in common but he must have picked up on my enthusiasm because he grinned, and when I said "you must be proud" he nodded and continued to roll. By collecting a prescription I had accidentally borne witness to the precise moment of regeneration.

It's hard to overstate how horrible Stroudley Walk used to be, despite the good efforts of the businesses and residents based there. Four rows of shops mostly concealed behind brick arches. A tall block of flats surrounded by scrappy grass. A large central zone optimistically left empty for market stalls but where only pigeons ever gathered. A dingy Post Office that shifted somewhere nicer in 2014. A Victorian pub that called last orders in 2006 and morphed into a cash and carry, then a chicken shop. A broad windswept cut-through devoid of charm. The architects should have been forced to live in one of the flats above the betting shop as some kind of punishment.

There thus weren't many dissenting voices when it was proposed to knock most of it down and building something better. The block of flats would be replaced by something twice the size. Two lower blocks would be shoehorned into excess space elsewhere. The southern parades would be replaced by a street of actual houses, not flats. All in all there'd be 274 new homes where previously there'd been 52, also a pocket park, also a community hub, also 33 new trees, also half the original shops would be retained in a cluster around the three listed buildings. But they'd been promising this would happen for years.

The crunch came in June 2022 when construction finally began, or rather demolition started. Down came Warren House floor by floor, and a team of builders moved in to undertake everything the redevelopment demanded. Annoyingly they set up camp in Stroudley Walk's central space, entirely blocking it off, which quite wrecked connectivity hereabouts. A gap of just 50m forced a quarter mile detour from one side to the other, this particularly annoying for those living to the south who couldn't easily get to the shops any more.

Those shops could also only be accessed via a thin strip of shielded walkway, necessitating squeezing past the takeaway and several trays of vegetables laid atop upturned crates. The hit to custom proved too much for Ahmed's Bakers Delight which ceased trading, also the coffee shop called Posted which opened with high hopes in 2024 and admitted defeat a year later. This cafe was about the only thing which might have appealed to incomers moving into the replacement 25-storey apartment block, a private tower branded Upper East, but instead its construction snuffed the business out.

But hurrah, after 46 blockaded months the hoardings are finally down and we can all walk through again. I thought I noticed a broader smile on the face of the minimart cashier yesterday morning. And yes haven't they been busy.

We have herringbone paving all the way down. We have imported shrubbery. We have rising bollards so only very selective vehicles can get in. We have angular patches dotted with rocks and logs, these filled with gravel suggesting they might be for drainage. We have mature trees and saplings that came in on the back of a lorry. We have additional brick colonnades, these thinner and taller in an attempt to better conceal the ugliness behind. We have a part-finished play area, larger than expected but nowhere near ready for children to clamber over it. We have doors to at least four blocks of flats. And we have a rather nice artwork reflecting the most significant event that ever happened here.

On 17th February 1913 Sylvia Pankhurst climbed onto a cart outside the LCC school, which was located where Upper East now stands, and delivered a campaigning speech in support of Votes for Women. She pleaded for the women of Bow to join her in making a sacrifice to secure enfranchisement, then walked a few steps up the road and hurled a large flint through the window of the local undertakers. Two policemen duly seized her and dragged her along Bow Road to the newly-opened police station, which led to a sentence of two months hard labour and a famous hunger strike in Holloway prison. The new artwork is thus a big disc in suffragette colours featuring the dates 1903-1928 and a swirl of related positive phrases. It's great to finally see recognition here, but I doubt Sylvia would have been pleased to see the roundel attached to railings which bar entry to a private garden.

Some of the new blocks were opened in October by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, his visit commemorated by a really cheap-looking plaque. But at least two blocks are still being fitted out ("Blue Overshoes Must Be Worn Throughout Block E") which'll be why there's still a small corral of diggers and portakabins outside the Halal Meat & Fish Bazar. The blocks all have locally relevant names, appropriately enough four pioneering women but seemingly skipping Sylvia Pankhurst. Let's see if we can work out who they were.

Zellie Emerson House: Zelie was an American activist who stood alongside Sylvia Pankhurst on her cart, spoke to the assembled crowd and ended up in prison for smashing the window of Bow Liberal Club. All the documentation I can find says her name has a single 'l' so I'm not sure why it's Zellie rather than Zelie here.
Muriel Lester House: Along with her sister Doris, Muriel was responsible for two great social projects to support the downtrodden of Bromley-by-Bow. One was Children's House, a nursery school which opened just round the corner in 1923 and the other was Kingsley Hall, best known as the place where Mahatma Gandhi stayed when he spent three months in Britain in 1931. Muriel explains all in this Pathé News report, and she is brilliant.
Rosaline McCheyne House: Rosaline was another member of the East London Federation of Suffragettes, more in an administrative role but none the less important for it was her who gathered the subscriptions that helped pay bail to get offenders out of prison. She also set up a pioneering Baby Clinic in St Leonards Street offering health advice and free milk to the mothers of newborns, this long before Call The Midwife.
Estelle House: Estelle who? Aha, Sylvia Pankhurst's full name was Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, so she is commemorated after all, appropriately enough by the tallest of the new buildings.

It's lovely to have Stroudley Walk back and open again, even if not all the workmen have cleared off yet. Four years of severance are finally over, I have hundreds of new neighbours and I suspect a few new businesses will be moving into the units under some of the newbuilds. Stroudley Walk's gentrification journey isn't over yet and could still arguably go too far, but it's impossible to look back on the previous grim brown incarnation and say this isn't a huge improvement.

East Bank (almost)

2026-04-18T07:00:00.215+01:00

Today's the day another building opens in the Olympic Park and the East Bank is three quarters complete.

From left to right
• V&A East, an outpost of the Victoria & Albert Museum, opens today!
• UAL London College of Fashion, opened September 2023
• BBC Music Studios (the new Maida Vale), opening next year
• Sadler's Wells East, a jazzy dance hub, opened January 2025

It's been a very very long time coming.

» 2007: Carpenters Road is a string of grubby car repair shops and trading units [blogged] [photo]
» 2012: a fortnight's use as the Water Polo Arena, a dismantlable wedge of Olympic pool [photo]
» 2014: Boris announces 'Olympicopolis'; the V&A, UAL and Sadler’s Wells will be involved [blogged]
» 2016: a long thin empty space awaits cultural nirvana (expected completion 2021) [blogged] [photo]
» 2018: Sadiq unveils building designs for the 'East Bank', now with added BBC [blogged] [photo]
» 2020: huge cranes arrive at Stratford Waterfront, UAL kicks off first [photo]

And even that was six years ago. Since then...

During lockdown I watched the shell of V&A East creep up floor by floor. In 2022 I watched cranes swinging panels of angular cladding into place. Since 2023 I've been taking photos of the alien bug exterior while work continued fitting out the interior. In 2024 I got to walk round the exterior for the first time with the remodelling of Carpenters Road substantially complete. Last week I stood beneath the huge statue out front and peered in through the glass door where the cleaners were doing some last-minute tidying up in the shop. And today's it's all systems go.

You'll find V&A East easily enough, there are big circular signs plastered on the ground across the Olympic Park pointing in the right direction. The easiest walk is out of Westfield, head for the Aquatics Centre and turn right at Sadler's Wells. If you're really stumped you can ask a security guard, there are loads of security guards, even first thing on Friday morning there were half a dozen security guards each patrolling their little bit of untrodden waterside. But that's surveillance paranoia for you, even though it's acknowledged "levels of crime on the Park are very low" I guess better safe than sorry. Alternatively you can come by bus, the 241 now stops round the back.

The statue out front is by Thomas J Price, a mixed race artist who grew up on a south London council estate. He specialises in oversized likenesses of young folk in casual get-up, usually black, often clutching a smartphone as is indeed the case here. We've had plenty of TJP's work in East London before, the first in 2013 near Three Mills and recently two anonymous gentlemen outside Hackney Town Hall. They always look good and they're always making a point, that point often being "you don't normally see statues of ordinary people like me". A Place Beyond is his tallest yet at 18 feet, and according to V&A East's director "it symbolises those historically excluded from public monuments, challenging our preconceptions about representation, perception and identity".

There's more art if you look down, a chain of circles atop the paving representing the south Indian decorative tradition of Kolam. These are by Lubna Chowdhary, a Tanzanian-born Pakistani artist, who deliberately spaced out the blobs at a stride's length. They call this piazza Waterfront Square, this because all the imagination was put into the art and definitely not into the naming process. The most overlooked artwork, I'd be willing to bet, is a series of oral histories called Voices of East Bank. It's only mentioned in the corner of a small information board and expects you to surf to the website eastbankvoices.co.uk to listen to 120 themed stories told by local residents. It's a wonderful idea but I reckon the museum would have closed before you got to the end, so it's just as well they've also provided transcripts... and maybe better to peruse a few at home instead.

The waterfront is overlooked by a massive terrace with stepped seating. It looks ridiculously unnecessary out of season but is very well used by all the students at the fashion college nipping out for a chat, vape or bite of food. They must also be the target audience for the row of eateries hidden down below at the riverside, only three of which are as yet occupied, because I doubt most visitors will ever notice them. They all do drinks but only one does ceremonial-grade matcha, only one does detox zinger juices and only one accompanies theirs with a suite of board games. The art down here is a series of fluorescent starburst phrases representing modern Cockney rhyming slang with "modern diasporic influences", so Jollof Rice means nice, S Club 7 means heaven and Clock 'em 'n' Pree means see. My eyes rolled too.

If you've not yet got the hint, East Bank is targeting a younger diverse audience rather than typical culturegoers. That's especially obvious from the theme of the first paid-for exhibition at V&A East which is called The Music is Black: A British Story. It's had excellent reviews, mostly from trusted media who didn't have to fork out £22.50 on a ticket, all augmented by an interactive soundscape on dished-out headphones as you wander round. It's also fully sold out this weekend so don't come specially for that yet. You could instead sample the collection of words and music the BBC's put together on BBC Sounds, because even if their Music Studios aren't opening until next year they can always join in with the collective theme.

Be aware that you don't have to be a student to pop inside UAL and admire the architecture, especially the central staircase, and can also explore whatever exhibition they might have on. Currently it's called Resonant Matter and explores the symbiosis between underground culture, music and fashion, so expect pirate radio and immersive installations, not a neatly arranged collection of dresses. Likewise Sadler's Wells East are getting in on the theme with a black-focused dance programme, most of it ticketed performances but tomorrow as a special treat there's a free and joyful showcase of collective jiggling called the Get Into Dance Festival. When there's no event on, however, Sadler's Wells East is basically just a smart cafe in a foyer with a lot of students upstairs.

The latest addition to East Bank's hospitality offering is V&A East's ground floor cafe, Jikoni, which occupies a prime corner and a strip of outside terrace. Its menu is inspired by rich flavours from immigrant cuisine, as those who've dined in its Marylebone restaurant will be aware, so although they do sausage rolls theirs are filled with spicy Baharat lamb. Meanwhile their toasties contain Goan aubergine achaar with Monty's Cheddar, all yours for 11.5, and if it's soup you want then the sole option is a mug of chicken, turmeric and lemongrass bone broth. It's not what Stratford folk were used to before the Olympic Park sparked mass gentrification, but I expect it'll be packed out.

Indeed I reckon the entire East Bank complex will be brimming over today with inquisitive culture seekers, making this the very worst possible day to look round V&A East's sole two free galleries. I'll probably give it a miss until midweek when all the rubberneckers have thinned out and there's a hope of admiring the architecture and the exhibits rather than weaving through a throng of people. Ian Visits has an excellent and honest review from before the place opened, hence his sightlines were clear and his staircase photos are immaculate. But how amazing to have all this on my doorstep, not just V&A East but the whole of the East Bank, now waiting for just one more building to open.

Anorak corner (tube edition)

2026-04-17T07:00:00.029+01:00

Anorak Corner (t h e a n n u a l u p d a t e ) [tube edition]

Hurrah, it's that time of year again when TfL silently updates its spreadsheet of annual passenger entry/exit totals at every tube station. It's really early this year.

As usual passenger numbers are surveyed for a typical week in autumn then multiplied up to a full year.
The data also includes DLR, Overground and Crossrail stations, but we'll get to those later.

London's ten busiest tube stations (2025) (with changes since 2024)
  1)   ↑1    King's Cross St Pancras (73m)
  2)   ↓1    Waterloo (70m)
  3)   ↑1    Tottenham Court Road (60m)
  4)   ↓1    Victoria (59.3m)
  5)          Liverpool Street (59.2m)
  6)   ↑1    Paddington (57m)
  7)   ↓1    London Bridge (55m)
  8)          Stratford (52m)
  9)          Oxford Circus (51m)
10)   ↑1    Bond Street (42m)

King's Cross returns to the top of the table after Waterloo nipped in for a year. Several other small swaps take place lower down with Tottenham Court Road overtaking Victoria and Paddington leapfrogging London Bridge. Liverpool Street may be Britain's busiest National Rail station but it's only the fifth busiest tube station. All ten stations have lower passenger totals than last year. Half of the tube's Top 10 are also on the Elizabeth line. The spreadsheet confirms that this is gateline data, i.e. passengers entering or exiting the station, so interchanges are not counted and no distinction is being made regarding mode of travel. Oxford Circus remains the busiest tube-only station and Stratford is still the busiest tube station outside zone 1.

The next 10: Farringdon, Bank/Monument, Euston, Canary Wharf, Green Park, South Kensington, Moorgate, Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, North Greenwich

24 tube stations had more than 20 million passengers last year and 60 exceeded 10 million. For comparison, 22 National Rail stations had more than 20 million passengers and 50 exceeded 10 million... so pretty similar.

London's ten busiest tube stations outside Zone 2 (2025)
  1)         Barking (17.2m)
  2)   ↑1   Ealing Broadway (17.0m)
  3)   ↓1   Wimbledon (16.7m)
  4)         Wembley Park (15.3m)
  5)         Tottenham Hale (13.8m)
  6)         Walthamstow Central (12.8m)
  7)   ↑2   Richmond (12.3m)
  8)   ↓1   Tooting Broadway (11.7m)
  9)   ↓1   Seven Sisters (11.6m)
10)         Upton Park (11.1m)

Barking remains in the top spot while Ealing Broadway nudges ahead of Wimbledon. The top three here all have gatelines shared by tube and rail services so Wembley Park's total is more reliably tubular. Northeast London has a particularly strong showing including three stations on the Victoria line. If the list were to continue then Harrow-on-the-Hill (8.4m) would be the highest performing tube station in Zone 5 and Heathrow Terminals 2&3 (5.3m) the busiest in Zone 6.

London's ten busiest tube stations that are only on one line
Canary Wharf, North Greenwich, Vauxhall, Brixton, Camden Town, Wimbledon, Old Street, Tottenham Hale, Knightsbridge, Walthamstow Central

Tube stations with over 10% more passengers in 2025 than 2024
Roding Valley, Kew Gardens, Upminster Bridge

Tube stations with over 10% fewer passengers in 2025 than 2024
Tufnell Park, Burnt Oak, Hendon Central, Park Royal, Sudbury Town, Alperton, North Ealing, Piccadilly Circus, Sudbury Hill, South Harrow. Covent Garden. Kingsbury, Hyde Park Corner

Last year Colindale and Kentish Town were both closed during the period of the survey. Their neighbouring stations were thus busier than usual but are now back to normal, hence Tufnell Park, Burnt Oak and Hendon Central show the biggest decline in passenger numbers.

London's 10 least busy tube stations (2025)
  1)         Roding Valley (201000)
  2)         Chigwell (304000)
  3)         Grange Hill (367000)
  4)         North Ealing (510000)
  5)         Theydon Bois (699000)
  6)   ↑1   Moor Park (795000)
  7)   ↑2   Ickenham (805000)
  8)         Ruislip Gardens (813469)
  9)   ↓3   Upminster Bridge (813470)
10)         Croxley (865000)

As usual the top three consists of the three stops on the Hainault shuttle. Roding Valley remains the least used station on the Underground but its passenger numbers are up 22% since 2024, the greatest increase of any tube station. North Ealing is unusually lightly used for a zone 3 station because Ealing Broadway and West Acton are close by and more useful. It haemorrhaged 18% of its passengers in 2025. Upminster Bridge had one more passenger than Ruislip Gardens! Only four of these ten stations lie within the Greater London boundary.

n.b. In this particular set of data Kensington (Olympia) counts as an Overground station, recording 2.5m passengers last year, whereas if you were only to count District line passengers it'd easily beat Roding Valley and be the tube's least used station.

The next 10: Fairlop, South Kenton, Chesham, West Acton, Barkingside, West Harrow, Boston Manor, Hillingdon, Park Royal, Sudbury Town

The least busy tube station in each zone (2025)
  zone 1) Regent's Park (2.1m)
  zone 2) Goldhawk Road (1.8m)
  zone 3) North Ealing (0.5m)
  zone 4) Roding Valley (0.2m)
  zone 5) Ruislip Gardens (0.8m)
  zone 6) Theydon Bois (0.7m)
  zone 7) Moor Park (0.8m)
  zone 8) Chalfont & Latimer (1.5m)
  zone 9) Chesham (1.0m)

And while we're here...

DLR Top 10: Greenwich (12m), Canary Wharf, Limehouse, Lewisham, Woolwich Arsenal, Shadwell, Heron Quays, East India, Westferry, South Quay
DLR Bottom 10: Beckton Park (0.4m), Stratford High Street, Prince Regent, Royal Albert, Elverson Road, Abbey Road, Blackwall, Star Lane, Poplar, King George V

n.b. Tube stations with DLR services don't count, otherwise Bank, Stratford and Canning Town would all be in the Top 5.

Canary Wharf would normally be the busiest DLR station but Greenwich beat it last year because Cutty Sark was closed. Beckton Park remains Tumbleweed Central after the neighbouring office development stalled. Pudding Mill Lane spent two decades in the Bottom 5 but thanks to ABBA it's no longer even in the Bottom 20.

Crossrail Top 10: Canary Wharf (19m), Abbey Wood, Hayes & Harlington, Woolwich, Heathrow T2&3, Ilford, Romford, Custom House, Heathrow T5, Southall
Crossrail Bottom 10: Iver (405000), Taplow, Langley, Twyford, Burnham, Hanwell, West Ealing, Gidea Park, Shenfield, Acton Main Line

n.b. Tube stations with Crossrail services don't count, otherwise every station from Paddington to Whitechapel would beat everything here.

Overground Top 10: Liverpool Street (16m), Clapham Junction, Shepherd's Bush, Hackney Central, Watford Junction, Peckham Rye, Shoreditch High Street, Denmark Hill, Dalston Junction, Dalston Kingsland
Overground Bottom 10: Emerson Park (0.3m), South Hampstead, Headstone Lane, Theobalds Grove, Hatch End, Penge West, Wandsworth Road, Cheshunt, Kilburn High Road, South Acton

n.b. Tube stations with Overground services don't count.

Liverpool Street and Clapham Junction are a very long way ahead of Shepherd's Bush. South Hampstead is the least used of all zone 2 stations. Barking Riverside has crept out of the bottom 10 (it's number 12) as the amount of housing nearby grows. Of the six Overground lines, the Suffragette line no longer appears in the Bottom 10 and the Liberty line takes the 'least used' crown.

Taken overall, TfL's ten least used stations are Roding Valley, Chigwell, Emerson Park, Grange Hill, Iver, Beckton Park, North Ealing, Taplow, South Hampstead and Theydon Bois. That's five tube stations, two Overground stations, two Elizabeth line stations and a DLR station.

As a final statistic, Roding Valley may be TfL's least used station by a country mile, but it's still busier than 45% of National Rail stations. We barely know what 'least used' means here in London.

» Search the data yourself
» Anorak Corner [rail edition]
» Anorak Corner [bus edition]

Hampstead Green

2026-04-16T07:00:00.151+01:00

This is Hampstead Green, a wildflower meadow just up the hill from Belsize Park station. It's fenced off to prevent public access but with low railings so all who pass by can admire. It looks fabulous at the moment with its carpet of spring bluebells, but is also very much under long-term threat from a variety of existential hazards.

Hampstead Green is the name given to a triangular patch of land at the top of Haverstock Hill. Go back far enough and this was part of a large area of manorial waste, later preserved as greenspace when the area started to be residentialised. Grand villas were built and also St Stephen's Church, designed by Samuel Teulon and consecrated in 1869. It hasn't always looked this good, for many years it was neglected and overgrown, but the local community cleared the area and transformed it into a natural open space. It's now planted with nine trees including cherry, sycamore and poplar and is principally cultivated as a wild flower meadow to encourage butterflies. But for how long?

Hampstead Green is managed by the Parks & Open Spaces team at Camden council. They aren't in dire financial straits at present but that could change, indeed every UK council has been under increasing strain since the austerity squeeze by the Coalition government. In Camden's latest budget document the allocation for Green Space management has thankfully risen to £3.85m but this has to cover a large number of sites, also it's only a 2.5% increase on last year and inflationary pressures instead suggest further tightening of belts. It's not inconceivable that the tending of a wildflower meadow could come to be seen as a discretionary extra, particularly when there are legal responsibilities to cover key services like bin collections and adult social care instead.

No such cutbacks are planned at present but the entire council's up for re-election next month, and indeed every four years hence, plus who's to say a future government won't squeeze council funding further. Imagine Eric Pickles on steroids taking up the post of Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government in a Reform government and cutting budgets to a rump 'to protect local taxpayers'. No space then for a namby pamby bio-diverse maintenance regime ("one third to be left uncut in rotation to allow later flowering species to seed"), far easier to just turf the whole thing and run a lawnmower over the lot occasionally. In a hypothetically brutal financial future, today's gorgeous bluebells could one day be history.

Hampstead Green is overlooked by the latest addition to the Royal Free Hospital, the Pears Building. This lowrise facility opened a few years ago and contains a world class Immunity and Transplantation institute with the capacity to accommodate 200 researchers, also the offices of the Royal Free Charity, also a 35-bed hotel for patients. It's a fine building but go back just 15 years ago and its footprint was instead grassland and an access road, because open space is always first to go when a hospital needs to expand. If the Royal Free needed to expand again then Hampstead Green is the last patch of open land locally and who's to say it wouldn't make a really nice medical facility? Technically this triangular patch is protected by a historic covenant signed by the council which restricts its use to "an enclosed open space", but there's always a way round these things if NHS priorities take precedence.

Britain's bluebells are also under considerable threat from climate change. They're blooming earlier due to milder springs, also being outgunned by competitive plants which start their leaf growth earlier in the year. A further threat comes from invasive Spanish and hybrid bluebells, these increasingly prevalent, and if temperatures rise too much then the suitable zone for bluebell growth may edge further north. You can't just replant bluebells, they take several years to establish themselves and grow to maturity, so this is not a loss it'd be easy to turn around. It might take decades but Hampstead Green could easily lose its Hampstead blue, so best enjoy them while they last.

Climate change brings further risks, not least the risk of the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. The AMOC loops around the world's oceans, in particular speeding warm currents from the equator towards the poles and warming the climate of northwest Europe. This helps explains why Britain has much milder winters than central Canada, despite being on the same latitude, dodging the snowbound winters and iced-up oceans that 52°N would normally bring. If the Gulf Stream failed we'd face noticeably colder winters ourselves, notionally only a 0.5°C drop per decade but after a century that'd be 5°C and we could expect lengthier freezes and icebergs off the Hebrides. What's more the most recent research suggests we're likely to be approaching an irreversible tipping point far faster than previously assumed, vastly reducing the UK's agricultural capability and broadening our seasons. It might only be your grandchildren that suffer as a result, living in a country whose climate would be unrecognisable to us today, but Hampstead Green's long term destiny is potentially as Hampstead White.

One of the inexorable consequences of climate change is a rise in sea levels. It's only a few millimetres a year at present but if tipping points are reached it could rise much faster and a coastal city like London could be under serious threat. Bluebells in lower lying spots like Kew Gardens would be first to be threatened, while it would take 15m of sea level rise to smother the glories of Chalet Wood in Wanstead Park. Hampstead Green's flowers are relatively safe being 80m above sea level, which is approximately the maximum height if all the planet's ice melted. But Hampstead-on-Sea is unlikely to be a charming seaside resort, more a brackish marshland in an abandoned city, so no gorgeous spring meadow will survive. We're talking very long term here because geological time waits for no man, but our current inaction may already have condemned substantial portions of the UK to an underwater future.

The swiftest way to permanently damage Hampstead Green would be sudden impact by a thermonuclear device. Usually this is unthinkable but only this week the US Treasury Secretary pondered out loud "I wonder what the hit to global GDP would be if a nuclear weapon hit London", referring to the potential capabilities of Iranian missiles. The fireball from a single 5 megaton intercontinental ballistic missile targeted on central London would only reach Regents Park but Hampstead would be uncomfortably inside the zone of 'moderate damage' where most residential buildings would collapse, injuries were universal and fatalities were widespread. We might well expect fires to burn out of control, also horrendous levels of fallout, and were it April the loss of most local bluebells. It's likely London would need to be evacuated, also that millions would suffer from radiation poisoning and that councillors would have far more pressing concerns than the maintenance of a lightly-mown nature reserve. And that'd be the end of Hampstead Green.

Looking further ahead, in around 5.4 billion years time our Sun will have burned out and shrunk to the size of a white dwarf. Earth will have become uninhabitable long before that, maybe around 2 billion years hence, as our star's expansion boils away the oceans. All kinds of global calamities could have occurred in the meantime, from a giant asteroid impact to man-made Armageddon to a ultra-fatal pandemic, even alien conquest. Everything on our planet has a finite lifespan, indeed if you look around yourself right now everything you see will one day be destroyed by irresistible forces, be that civilisational collapse, oceanic immersion, tectonic action or universal decay. Hampstead Green is ultimately doomed, of that we can be absolutely certain, so best admire the lovely bluebells in the wildflower meadow while you can.