diamond geezer

Christchurch

2026-05-27T07:00:00.000+01:00

Gadabout: CHRISTCHURCH

That's Christchurch in Dorset, not the city in New Zealand. Until 1974 it was marginally in Hampshire and since 2019 has been part of a unitary authority uninspiringly called Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. Geographically it's the easternmost of the three, nudging the New Forest, and also by far the oldest thanks to the allure of its natural harbour. I last visited on holiday in the late 1960s when my chief memory is of leaving a teddy bear behind in a seafront cafe, then forcing my parents to go back and search and being disconsolate when nobody could find it. It still wasn't there this time but thankfully there was plenty to see, also my advance rail sale ticket accidentally delivered me to a glorious coastal town on the hottest bank holiday ever. [Visit Christchurch] [40 photos]

10 things to see in Christchurch

1) Christchurch Castle
From the Stone Age onwards settlers have been drawn to the strategic point where the River Stour meets the River Avon. Here the Normans upgraded the site of an Anglo-Saxon wooden fort to a proper motte and bailey, later adding a chunky stone tower on top, some of which survives in ruins. English Heritage don't charge because there's not enough here, it's more a town centre sideshow, also all that remains of the adjacent Constable's House is a few walls. I yomped up some wiggly steps between two family groups, hoping for a better view than I got because a lot of town centre rooftops get in the way, but you do get a good idea of how long the parish church is. Blimey it's enormous.

2) Christchurch Priory
About 20 English cathedrals are smaller, that's how massive Christchurch Priory is. It used to be part of an Augustinian monastery but it was huge even before that, founded by one of William II's chief ministers. It's said he wanted to build it on a hilltop two miles away but one morning the workers found all the construction materials had mysteriously relocated here. It's also said that one particular beam was accidentally cut too short and would have gone to waste, except a mysterious carpenter somehow lengthened it and raised it into place while nobody was looking. Could it have been Him? So pervasive was the legend of the 'Miraculous Beam' that the building became known as Christ Church, eventually edging out the town's original name which used to be Twynham.

There's no charge for entry and from what I heard every first time visitor says "oh blimey it really is big", or words to that effect. Staring down the arched nave through the choir to the lofty altarpiece it does indeed feel much more like a cathedral, whereas in fact it's merely the longest parish church in England. One sightseeing bonus is St Michael's Loft Museum, an unexpectedly large room located above the Lady Chapel and accessed via a one-way system of 72 narrow spiral steps - yours for an additional donation of £1. The church was recently in the news for updating its gargoyles, one of which I spotted high on the exterior at the eastern end - a Covid-era NHS nurse complete with facemask, lest we forget. For a similar medieval take check out the 39 beastly carvings (or misericordia) on the stalls in the choir, some thematically based on Aesop's fables.
On the sign outside it says the 8am service is Holy Communion (BCP), and it took me a while to realise this wasn't a reference to the local council but to the Book of Common Prayer.

3) Red House Museum
The town's museum is based in an old workhouse, a long redbrick building hence the Red House Museum. It's not normally open on Mondays but thankfully they make an exception for bank holidays otherwise I'd never have seen all the treats inside. Downstairs is mostly bygones, much local but some merely evocative of a past era. Upstairs is full-on archaeology, the area being extremely rich in pre-Roman settlements and consequent finds. Another wing focuses on the workhouse itself while a modern annexe does a fine job of bring the surrounding suburbs to life with a series of historic aerial photos. I confess I hadn't known that the WW2 concept of a Bailey Bridge was originally tested here in Christchurch at the Experimental Bridging Establishment.

The gardens are splendid with umpteen specimens carefully labelled, the rosebushes just coming into their own and also a surprising number of dinosaurs lurking in the shrubbery. The lady on the front desk said 10 green-fingered volunteers come in twice a week and yes it shows, also another 40 keep the museum ticking over which is a benefit of Christchurch being a town a heck of a lot of people retire to. So it saddened me somewhat that I was the sole visitor, this despite the town being rammed with bank holiday footfall passing within sight of the building while shuttling between two one-off retail attractions. It seems people prefer fudge stalls and charcuterie to a free dose of heritage, lovingly curated, or perhaps they all visited years ago and history just can't keep up.

not 4) Museum of Electricity
Sorry you're too late for this, it closed in 2012 and the remaining contents were auctioned off last year.

4) High Street
The High Street was bypassed in 1958, removing a historic pinchpoint and returning a little civility to the town centre. It also allows the street to close each Monday for a market, and I don't know if it's bigger on a bank holiday but I was impressed by the extent, the variety and the patronage. I'd never seen a stall populated by multicoloured 3D-printed dragons before. It did however make it harder to see the old buildings behind, like the classical Midland Bank, ye olde coaching inn and the pristine Art Deco Regent cinema. All that remains of the old town hall is the Victorian frontispiece, the remainder now a 1980s shopping precinct called Saxon Square because they found a 7th century cemetery on site during reconstruction. The Celtic Cross outside the discount book shop is thus entirely fake.

5) The Ducking Stool
Most medieval towns had a ducking stool for the punishment of mouthy women, with Christchurch's first recorded in 1350. What's unusual is that a full-size replica has been built and placed by the millstream at the end of Ducking Stool Lane. It looks much too pristine but is also evocative of disturbingly unenlightened times, that is until you spot it couldn't physically lower anyone into the trickle of water except at times of major flood. The Ducking Stool is also stop number 3 on the Christchurch Cultural Trail, a pleasingly short loop designed to help visitors not miss anything important.

6) Christchurch Harbour
The Avon and the Stour are significant rivers with over-used names, one flowing down from Salisbury Plain and the other from Stourhead, obviously. They meet off Christchurch Quay, merging to form a substantial estuary/harbour combo that meanders for almost two miles towards the sea at Mudeford. It's perfect for messing around in boats, awash with yachts and motorcraft and also local youth on stand-up surfboards, or perhaps I just caught things on a perfect bank holiday afternoon. The building that best catches the vibe is The Captain's Club which looks like it ought to supervise regattas but is actually just a luxury hotel and spa. The cheapest way to take to the water is the Wick Ferry, just £1.50 to briefly cross the Stour to Tuckton Tea Gardens rather than endure a mile's walk to the lowest bridging point and back.

not 7) Tucktonia
Sorry you're too late for this too. Inspired by Bekonscot, a local racing driver built a 3 acre model village on a former golf course near Tuckton Bridge. Everything was to 1:24 scale including a substantial number of London landmarks and a runway from which Concorde would take off hourly. Tucktonia was opened on 23rd May 1976 by Arthur Askey, but only because Bernie Ecclestone wasn't available. Visitor numbers were initially strong, fuelled by considerable celebrity endorsement, and even more models were squeezed onto the site. Alas maintenance costs proved excessive, a takeover by Grand Metropolitan stunted investment and nobody had quite anticipated the furious nimbyism of the Fairway Drive Residents' Association, thus the entire project wound up at the end of 1986. Some exhibits transferred elsewhere but most were lost (or burnt in a fire), and the entire site was subsequently redeveloped as a residential development called The Meridians. What a sad waste.
11-part history here, 32 photos here, 10 minute documentary here.

7) The Quomps
The prize for the best name locally goes to the Quomps, the greensward where town meets river. Until the 1920s it was an unenclosed common, then the land was raised and levelled to create a pleasure park. I saw it under entirely atypical conditions as the venue for the weekend-long Christchurch Food Festival, thus covered with stalls, tents and vans selling everything from loaded fries to truffle-infused streetfood. And it was packed, a genteel pilgrimage to calorific consumption which confirmed the utter Middle-Englandness of this southwest conurbation. Also I was well chuffed to find a Chucklehead cider stall, now £6 a pint but a chilled bargain given it won't be coming anywhere near Brockwell Park this year, dammit.
Come back on 1st August for Christchurch's annual outdoor jazz festival, Stompin' on the Quomps.

8) Stanpit Marsh
Downriver from the town centre, just past the boarded-up former council offices, the estuary's edge opens out to a considerable swathe of saltmarsh. Largest of these is Stanpit Marsh, 160 acres of creeky flatness, salt pans, reed beds and sandy scrub. The Visitor Centre is a raised viewing platform with a specimen-packed fieldwork room, a great step up from the original caravan, where the ranger was pointing out highlights to a handful of spotters. I walked out onto the cracked expanse and had the long track all to myself, bar the birdsong and a small newt who scuttled silently across my path. Always read beyond the usual list of tourist attractions if you want a special experience on your gadabout.

9) Another brilliant place
10) The other brilliant place
Of which more tomorrow.

» 40 photos of Christchurch on Flickr

mmmm, Chipstead

2026-05-26T08:00:00.000+01:00

Last week I went to Chipstead station.
Mmmmm, chips, I thought.

Alas there isn't a chippy in Chipstead, the nearest is Mr Chips on Chipstead Valley Road in Coulsdon, and that's much nearer Woodmansterne station.

But it made me wonder how many other UK stations have food in their names.
I've created four lists, from 100% to dubious.

PREMIER LEAGUE One word is food Berry Brow Bournville Bramley Caerphilly Cherry Tree Ham Street Liverpool Lime Street Pineapple Road Pudding Mill Lane Rice Lane Peckham Rye/Rye/Rye House Sandwich Sole Street Strawberry Hill Sugar Loaf Turkey Street	CHAMPIONSHIP The name is part food Appleby/Appledore/Appleford Appley Bridge Battersby/Battersea Park Berrylands Chipstead/Chippenham Codsall Cressing/Cressington Dumfries Eggesford Fishbourne/Fishersgate/Fishguard Hathersage Honeybourne Musselburgh Nutbourne/Nutfield Peartree Plumley/Plumpton/Plumstead Saltash/Saltaire/Lelant Saltings Shippea Hill
DIVISION 1 The name makes you think food Banbury, Bath, Dundee, Eccles, Gloucester, Leicester, Lincoln, Melton Mowbray	DIVISION 2 Arguably there is food Ambergate, Aylesham (and everywhere else called -ham), Bangor, Bayford, Caterham, Cookham, Egham, Fareham, Headcorn, Hungerford, Market Rasen, Mouldsworth, Nuneaton, Pye Corner, Rock Ferry

(might have missed a few)

62 Camden Square

2026-05-26T07:00:00.000+01:00

The temperature record which fell yesterday, the UK's hottest ever day in May, was last broken at Camden Square on 22nd May 1922.

It still holds the record for the hottest ever days in two other months, that's 29.4°C in April 1949 and 35.6°C in June 1957.

But there's no longer a weather station at Camden Square so why was it there then, and where exactly is this record-breaking spot anyway?

Unsurprisingly it's in Camden but not the touristy bit, more to the northeast, parallel to Camden Road and a five minute walk from the station of that name. The 'square' is long and thin, maybe 200m in length, and surrounded by mostly Victorian villas. Most of the square is public gardens, a much smaller part is given over to the exercising of dogs and the southern end houses a children's play centre. It's perhaps best known for Amy Winehouse's last home at number 30 where she died in 2011. But we're interested in number 62 at the southern end where one of the great meteorologists lived, that's the cream one in this terrace between the grey and the pink.

George Symons was born in Pimlico in 1838, a quiet boy who took an increasing interest in meteorological observations. While still a teenager he delivered an investigation of thunderstorms to the Meteorological Society, this encouraging him to focus on the accurate collection of rainfall statistics. In 1860 he published a leaflet listing rainfall totals at 160 stations across the country, the following year upped this to 500, and in 1863 resigned his job at the Board of Trade so he could focus on collecting and disseminating rainfall data. His publication 'British Rainfall' was published annually and relied on the contributions of thousands of amateurs taking regular readings using standardised equipment. Symons thus became founder of the British Rainfall Organization, and I doubt there's ever been a more British organisation than that.

Initially Symons lived at 136 Camden Road, just round the corner, but in 1868 moved to 62 Camden Square and made daily observations here until his death in 1900. His weather station was in a walled back garden - a particularly urban environment compared to later London weather stations at St James's Park, Kew Gardens or the Air Ministry Roof, hence arguably it delivered slightly higher temperatures than might be recorded today. Symons was however a stickler for accuracy, for example encouraging experimentation into the most reliable form of rain gauge, indeed it's thanks to him that the Met Office standard became a five-inch funnel with its rim one foot off the ground checked daily at 9am.

Such was the importance of Symons' record that readings continued at 62 Camden Square for many years after his death. The meteorologist Hugh Robert Mill supervised proceedings (and the annual publication of British Rainfall) until his retirement in 1920, at which point the British Rainfall Organization was subsumed into a department of the Meteorological Office. The Royal Meteorological Society acquired 62 Camden Square in 1922 - the same year the record May temperature was recorded - with daily observations continued by housekeepers until 1957. The station was then moved a short distance to the gardens in Camden Square where it continued until 1969, at which point an 111-year span of record keeping in the vicinity came to a close. Yes there is a plaque.

Here from 1868 to 1900 lived George James Symons FRS, pioneer in the scientific study of rainfall, founder of the British Rainfall Organization, twice president of the Royal Meteorological Society. 1838-1900.

Camden Square continues to hold the UK record for the warmest day in April (29.4°C) and shares the record for the warmest day in September (35.6°C). It also holds the daily records for 16th April, 12th 16th 18th 21st 22nd 28th 30th May, 5th 7th 22nd 29th June, 7th 8th 13th 15th July, 29th August and 18th 19th 23rd September. Of these only the 35°C on 15th July 1881 was recorded by George Symons himself, but I do like the fact that the great man who gave us accurate rainfall records is still directly responsible for the warmest St Swithin's Day of all time.

Further reading
» A SHORT HISTORY OF THE BRITISH RAINFALL ORGANIZATION by D E Pedgley (22 pages, published 2002)
» BRITISH RAINFALL 1899 (319 pages, includes obituary for George Symons)

The hottest day in May

2026-05-25T07:00:00.000+01:00

In an amazing turn of meteorological good fortune, at least for those of us in south and east England, a heatwave has aligned with the late May bank holiday weekend.

We don't normally get temperatures of 30°C and above in May, even late May, because it's still officially spring no matter how you classify it.

The last time England reached 30°C in May was 25th May 2012 and the time before that 27th May 2005. That's only twice this century and just once in the last 20 years. In the 20th century there are reports of hitting 30°C on 21st May 1922, 29th May 1944 (a week before D Day), 12th May 1945 (just after VE Day), 29th May 1947 (after a punishingly cold winter) and 25th May 1953 (a week before the Coronation). 30°C in May is rare and highly intermittent but not unheard of.

The earliest that 30°C has ever been recorded in the UK is 12th May, whereas June is more likely, July is more normal and in some years it never happens at all. If we take the modern definition that a 'heatwave' requires three consecutive days of elevated temperatures, then Britain's never seen one in May until this weekend.

Over the last decade we've averaged twelve days over 30°C each year - fifty years ago it was only four. But it's not all about recent climate change... the only year when 30°C has been recorded from in every month May to September is 1947.

If you tot up all the 30°C days in the last fifteen years, about 45% of them were in July, about a quarter were in August, another 20% in June and just 10% in September. May doesn't really get a look in, even with this year's heatwave factored in.

Today may be the hottest UK bank holiday of all time. The current record holder is August Bank Holiday Monday 2019 when the temperature reached 33.2°C at Heathrow, beating the previous record of 32.8°C on the Late Spring Bank Holiday Monday in 1944. The absence of bank holidays between late May and late August is mostly responsible here.

More extremely, today should break the record for the UK's hottest day in May. The current record is 32.8°C, first achieved on 22nd May 1922 and then equalled on 29th May 1944. That is a very long time for a temperature record to have stood, and at time of posting has six hours left. It's also a fairly complex record shared between four locations - Camden Square in 1922 and Horsham, Tunbridge Wells and Regent's Park in 1944.

Meteorologists keep records not just for months but also individual days of the year, so we can also list the maximum temperatures ever recorded on 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th May.

23rd May: 31.7°C on the Isle of Grain in 1922
24th May: 32.2°C (90°F) at Camden Square in 1922
25th May: 31.7°C at Farnham and Heathrow in 1947
26th May: 29.5°C at Inverailort (Highland) in 2010

Nowhere on Saturday beat the daily record for 23rd May, with Frittenden in Kent reaching only 30.5°C. But Kew Gardens yesterday reached 32.3°C, becoming (marginally) the warmest 24th May ever recorded. Somewhere today is almost certain to beat the daily record for 25th May, and the daily record for 26th May also looks like being smashed tomorrow, probably by several degrees.

Unlike many warm spells, this one's not due to hot air blowing north from Africa. Instead it's classic high pressure behaviour, a huge blob of air being compressed as it moves downward leading to warming through a process known as adiabatic compression. The great heatwave of 1976 occurred for much the same reason, but that was in late June/early July, not at the end of May.

Here are the years in which the UK's monthly temperature records were last broken. For May that's currently 1922 but is about to be 2026.

When the UK maximum monthly temperature record was last broken
*Jan*	*Feb*	*Mar*	*Apr*	*May*	*Jun*	*Jul*	*Aug*	*Sep*	*Oct*	*Nov*	*Dec*
2024	2019	1968	1949	1922	1976	2022	2003	1906	2011	2015	2019

Years in the 21st century are underlined. There are seven of these, and are about to be eight, i.e. two-thirds of our monthly records have been broken since the millennium. Five have changed in the last ten years. Every month from October to February has been upgraded since 2011, suggesting that winter extremes are being affected more than summer extremes.

The elusive monthly records that haven't been broken recently are as follows.

Mar: 25.6°C Mepal (Cambs) 29 Mar 1968
Apr: 29.4°C Camden Square 16th Apr 1949
Jun: 35.6°C Camden Square 29th Jun 1957 / Southampton 28th June 1976
Sep: 35.6°C Bawtry (South Yorks) 2nd Sep 1906

The monthly record being broken today is older than all but one of these.

Meanwhile at the cold end of the spectrum...

When the UK minimum monthly temperature record was last broken
*Jan*	*Feb*	*Mar*	*Apr*	*May*	*Jun*	*Jul*	*Aug*	*Sep*	*Oct*	*Nov*	*Dec*
1982	1956	2018	1917	1979	1975	1978	1964	1915	1973	1919	1995

Years in the 21st century are underlined. There's only one of these, indeed the monthly minimum temperature record has only been broken twice in the last 40 years, whereas in the same period the record for maximum temperature has been broken eight times.

In summary, when it comes to monthly temperature records we've been breaking a lot more maxima than minima recently. It doesn't prove the climate is heating up, not in itself, but it is self-evidently the direction of travel you'd expect if it was. I wonder which monthly record will fall next.

8am update: Last night the temperature at Kenley didn't dip below 19.4°C. This is the warmest night ever recorded in May (beating 18.9°C in Folkestone in May 1947).
noon update: Heathrow has just reached 32.9°C, breaking the record for the hottest day in May. And still rising.
1pm update: Heathrow has reached 33.5°C, making today the hottest bank holiday ever.
5pm update: Kew Gardens has topped out at 34.8°C, breaking the previous record for the hottest day in May by 2°C. That is an incredible margin.
5pm update: Until today 34½°C had never been reached in the UK before 26th June, so we're an entire month early!
6pm update: Wales has also beaten its record for the hottest day in May (was 30.6°C, is now 32.2°C).
7pm update: The Channel Islands have beaten their record for the hottest day in May or June!
8pm update: Also reaching 34°C today - Heathrow 34.4°C, Northolt 34.2°C, Iver 34.1°C and Teddington 34.0°C.
9pm update: ...and it might be even hotter tomorrow.

7am update: Kenley has again had the warmest night ever recorded in May with an overnight minimum of 21.3°C. This is two degrees warmer than yesterday's record!
3pm update: Heathrow and Kew Gardens have broken the May record again, this time reaching 35.0°C.
5pm update: Kew Gardens peaked at 35.1°C, 2.3°C above the previous May record and only half a degree off the UK maximum for June.

K is for Keston

2026-05-24T07:00:00.000+01:00

LONDON A-Z
K is for Keston

My next alphabetical destination is Keston, a rural suburban outlier not to be confused with Kenley which was never in Kent. We're in the London borough of Bromley where things tip over from avenues to country lanes, further out than Hayes but not as far as Biggin Hill. Keston has an exceptionally ancient history, also one of London's handful of windmills, also biodiversity that Darwin appreciated, also the former homes of two of our most consequential Prime Ministers. It's also impressively unfocused so expect a lengthy wander.

The key thing about Keston is that it's where the River Ravensbourne begins. The waters emerge from a natural spring at the top of the common, this at the point where the overlying gravels meet the impermeable clay underneath. It's called Caesar's Well, based on the easily disprovable legend that Julius Caesar's men paused here in 55BC after being led to a source of water by a raven. Did not happen. This was however the source of water for a much older Iron Age fort and was also used by Georgian gentry for secluded bathing purposes. These days the spring bubbles up inside a ring of bricks and is funnelled towards three large ponds dug 200 years ago, a glorious haven for ducks, lilies and yellow iris. The footpath past the top lake is briefly all mud, even after several dry months, which is why London Loop section 3 sensibly offers an alternative route.

Keston Common is just glorious, 100 undulating acres of mixed habitats and much of it registered common land. Most visitors cluster round the ponds for car-parking reasons, also this is where multiple fisherfolk will return once the close season ends next month. Elsewhere are patches of acid heathland (where I spotted conservators at work), shady cone-strewn pebbly banks and also one of London's six lowland bogs. Keston Bog was often visited by local naturalist Charles Darwin whose study of the native sundews inspired his seminal work Insectivorous Plants. One particularly up-and-down section includes a lengthy Iron Age bank and ditch abutting what more recently was a gravel pit, this with banks of wooden stairs installed. Hats off to the Friends of Keston Common who've installed several themed information boards around the site and also reproduced them on their website so you can see how excellent they are.

Across Westerham Road a single public footpath enters the estate of local stately home Holwood House. This was once the pride and joy of PM William Pitt who had John Soane in to tweak the interior and Humphry Repton to do the grounds. Alas all was to no avail because the next owner knocked the lot down and built a fifteen-bay Grecian-style villa in white brick and Portland stone, which still stands. But it's only visible if you walk a long way up the path, the body of the estate otherwise shielded by barbed wire, thick woodland and the occasional keypadded gate. The circular building you can almost see through the trees is a loop of 78 luxury apartments called The Crescent, built on the industrial footprint of a former lab erected by Seismograph Services for England, another former owner. Even less visible are the remaining ramparts of the Iron Age Fort on the northwest flank, and if you'd just paid £20m for the place you wouldn't want anyone looking in either.

Six minutes up the path is Keston's most historic spot, a forked stump known as the Wilberforce Oak. It was here after a country walk in 1787 that William Wilberforce, MP for Hull, sat down with PM William Pitt and made a world-changing decision.

"Just above a steep descent into the vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice on a fit occasion in the House of Commons of my intention to bring forward the abolition of the Slave Trade."

Both men were still in their late 20s at the time and the slave trade wouldn't be ended until they were mid-40s, but that's still quite some breakthrough to commemorate. A beautiful stone bench was added at the site in 1862, including that quote from Wilberforce's diary set inside a lozenge. Alas for the bicentenary in 1987 the seat was relocated just behind the perimeter fence so mere mortals can no longer sit on it, nor thankfully carve their initials. But a weathered stump remains on the public side, partway down a grass bank bright with foxgloves, even if I don't think that's from the actual Wilberforce Oak either, long cleared away.

To the north of all this is the Keston Lodge Estate, 143 acres of former Holwood land sold off to a property developer in 1923. Here Frederick Rogers built 200 luxury homes down seven wide leafy avenues and renamed it ‘Keston Park’, also gifting residents two private woodlands for their recreation. A few ultra-modern boltholes have since been added amid the rustic mega-lodges, and every entrance is now secured by grand electronic gates and signs warning of CCTV and ANPR. I was hoping to snoop because a single public footpath traverses the length of Holwood Park Avenue but alas this is closed for six months "due to utility works and construction development". I thus cannot show you a surreptitious shot of Dormers where Margaret Thatcher raised her children, having spotted it for sale in a 1957 edition of Country Life.

The parish church is some way from the heart of things, way down south by the turnoff to Downe. It's small, flinty and Norman, supposedly with Saxon structures within, more recently appended by a long L-shaped set of rooms masquerading as a cloister. The gnarled yew out front looks pretty ancient too, its girth now comfortably over 4 metres. But something even older survives in the fields beyond, down in the valley, where the remains of a Roman villa and mausoleum are located. Both are off-limits, even by sight, but one of the three tombs is a substantial circular structure measuring 9m across with six radiating buttresses, according to those who've been fortunate enough to get a tour.

Follow Westerham Road and you may catch a glimpse of Keston Windmill, one of six in London, thus not (as many sources quote) "the oldest post mill in Kent". It's jet black and was built in 1716, making it an unlikely survivor, and still has two pairs of millstones and four atypically thin sails. Alas it's only open on occasional days but hasn't been for years, also it's located in the private grounds of a cottage behind high trees so annoyingly well screened. My attempts at taking a decent photo were thwarted by foliage and also by the owners doing some gardening by the roadside, so you'll have to make do with the version on the village sign instead.

I should point out that Keston also has some properly normal bits, normal that is for a village rather than for mainstream Greater London. Its heart is arguably the village green at the southern tip of Hayes Common, this where the aforementioned sign is, also the original drinking fountain from Bromley Market. There are two pubs, The Fox and The Greyhound, both currently behind scaffolding so somewhat unphotogenic. Residents also have the option of two independent cafes, with Heathfields smaller but more chi-chi than Triple Two on the green. The handful of shops offer the chance to get your hair cut, your car fixed or your parcel posted, and if that's not good enough the 146 and 246 buses connect to Bromley town centre three times an hour.

If my Keston ramblings have tempted you to visit then London Loop section 3 passes the Wilberforce Oak, the ponds on the common and the pubs on the green, which are basically the highlights. Alternatively if you come in a fortnight's time you can enjoy KestFest, the village's annual shindig on the green, with food stalls, a dog show, 'fun stalls' and ice cream from Shirley's van. Also live music from DJ Dave and a band called Roof Raisers, all from 1pm on Saturday 6th June... and if you time that walk right you can enjoy the lot.

Britain's shortest train journey

2026-05-23T07:00:00.000+01:00

London's free roof terraces

2026-05-22T07:00:00.000+01:00

A few years ago some City speculators spotted they were more likely to get planning permission if their new skyscraper included a free public roof terrace. Free access to elevated views is always a winner in my book. So yesterday I went up a few.

This was all on-the-hoof so I didn't go up the big three because they expect you to book in advance.

Sky Garden at The Fenchurch Building, aka The Walkie-Talkie
Opened January 2015, 35th-37th floors, blogged here
You have to book at least three weeks ahead, but yesterday 'Closed For Private Event'.

Horizon 22 at 22 Bishopsgate
Opened September 2022, 57th-58th floor, blogged here
Tickets released on Mondays, they go fast but ridiculously early slots are often available.

The Lookout at 8 Bishopsgate
Opened August 2022, 50th floor, blogged here
Tickets released on Mondays, current availability in four days time, but Horizon 22 is better.

I went instead to the walk-straight-ins, starting with the newest.

The Terrace at 1 Leadenhall
Opened April 2026, 4th floor, Ian Visited here (map)
Lift duration: 20 seconds, Staff on duty: 2

This one's odd. When you think roof terrace you normally think lofty and airy, but this one's merely on the 4th floor of a 36 storey skyscraper with a view to match. You walk in round the corner from Leadenhall Market, opposite Waterstones, through a door that doesn't quite scream 'come in'. A bloke at a lectern in what appears to be a service corridor then walks you over to the lifts ("press 4 for me") before returning to his purgatorial wait for almost no visitors. It's certainly quick though, I was on The Terrace less than a minute after walking in downstairs.

The terrace is about 40m long and up to 10m wide, seemingly formed by cutting a two-storey wedge out of the side of the building. At one end is the entrance to a restaurant that hasn't opened yet, so may one day bring some buzz, whereas I had the place to myself apart from a security guard with nobody to watch but me. Eight benches have been provided amid a thin line of shrubbery, but better to walk up to the far ends because the central view is somewhat limited. You can look down in which case what you see is the roof of world-class tourist attraction Leadenhall Market. However all the amazing glitzy dazzle is on the underside, thus from above this could be any Victorian arcade and a few nice finials is as good as it gets.

More awkwardly the view to the south is substantially blocked by ongoing works on 85 Gracechurch Street, a neighbouring 32-storey tower that's only just reached double figures. This will one day have a free-to-visit fifth-floor public terrace, perhaps with the chance for people to be staring back over here, but for now it's just a crane and a heck of a lot of white sheeting. A better view can be had by walking to either end, indeed the chief interest is finding yourself above street level in the heart of the City's chief upthrust cluster.

At the Waterstones end you can see 8 and 22 Bishopsgate, the Cheesegrater and right up close the Lloyds Building with minions riding the elevators on its knobbly metal shell. Then the Scalpel, the roof terrace I'm heading to next, postmodern Minster Court, Plantation Place and the Walkie Talkie. The Shard is still visible (for now), then the Gracechurch Street end has the finer silhouettes of St Paul's dome, St Michael's tower and St Peter's spire. This roof terrace is a true oddity, a public space that's nice to have but fundamentally pointless, and if you ever need a mid-City toilet or a dry spot to eat your sandwiches it'd make an intriguing diversion.

The Garden at 120 at Fen Court
Opened February 2019, 15th floor, blogged here (map)
Lift duration: 40 seconds, Staff on duty: 6

This one's long-established, popular and still the largest roof garden in the City. You do have to endure a scanner chicane before being admitted but I was swiftly through, this time three minutes from joining the queue to reaching the roof. Get stuck behind a full party of teenage EU tourists and it could be rather longer. The lift brings you up mid-terrace with a large pergola close by, in 2019 bare but now with wisteria twinkling its last and a rose-bush shrubbery underneath. The gardeners did good.

But the best thing here is the 360° panorama from the jagged perimeter, some of which is open enough to have a proper long distance view. Tower Bridge is almost unobscured, also the Tower itself, also the helipad at the Royal London in Whitechapel at almost the same elevation as yourself. But spin round and there's also Docklands, the Crystal Palace transmitter and the London Eye, plus close-up the glories of the Gherkin in a convenient slim gap to the north. A few of the younger visitors seemed more interested in pouting than their backdrop but that's their loss. If you've never been up here, or even thought to, give The Garden at 120 a go.

Roof Terrace at One New Change
Opened November 2010, 6th floor, blogged here (map)
Lift duration: 20 seconds, Staff on duty: 3

When a shopping centre was plonked alongside St Paul's Cathedral, someone had the sense to put a tongue of public terrace on the roof. The real motive may have been to give the rooftop bar an amazing setting for sipping frozen margueritas but the rest of us are also elevated winners. The glass-sided lift whisks you up from brand central with excellent views of the cathedral funnelled down a slim reflective notch. The upper terrace is slightly stepped with plants and benches, but if you sit down the view vanishes behind a grey bulwark labelled 'Beware Sudden Drop'. The South Bank and the London Eye get a decent look-in but it's really all about Wren's dome, perfectly framed in a way that the telescope in Richmond Park no longer enjoys. Expect a brief visit, but distinctive.

Level 10 at Tate Modern
Opened June 2016, 10th floor, blogged here (map)
Lift duration: 35 seconds, Staff on duty: 1

Tate Modern had high hopes for the 10th floor of the Blatnavik Building with its cafe and a four-sided observation terrace with excellent views of the Thames. Alas it also had great views into the apartments at Neo Bankside whose residents ultimately sued and won, thus if you arrive by lift today you can only visit the cafe. All the exterior doors are locked and signs on the inaccessible balcony say NO PHOTOGRAPHY OR FILMING, with a grumpy looking security guy positioned to ensure compliance. I asked him "will the balcony ever open again?" and he grunted "no", not even the front bit, and basically the entire 10th floor is now a ghastly waste of architectural effort.

Roof Garden at The Post Building
Opened September 2022, 9th floor, blogged here (map)

This one's by far the westernmost roof terrace, hence offers a unique view across the West End's lowrise rooftops including a close-up of the British Museum's magnificent roof. I still don't understand why it's here nor why it's open daily, nor why they insist on Photo ID "and a full written name" before they'll let you up. However I didn't get the chance to test this out yesterday because when I arrived the roof terrace was "closed due to essential maintenance work", inconveniencing probably nobody but myself. I have to say that's probably the excuse I'd use if I'd built a white elephant terrace for planning reasons and wanted to avoid paying staff costs, or alternatively maybe there is some maintenance issue and the place is cursed. At least with a ticketed venue visitors would have known this in advance. Best go up The Garden at 120 instead, or plan ahead and do one of the three really high ones.

Arsenal, triumph & empathy

2026-05-21T07:00:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday evening, without kicking a ball, Arsenal became this season's Premier League champions.

A draw at Bournemouth ended Man City's chances, gifting Arsenal their triumph, as hundreds of thousands of fans celebrated on the final whistle. They whooped, they grinned, they partied, and many of then were still partying many hours later. Whereas I merely had a tab open on my laptop, and after seeing the final score smiled and went back to what I was doing.

It's been 22 years since Arsenal last won the Premiership, a period which some would describe as 22 years of pain and which I would describe as "a very long time". During that period Arsenal have won the FA Cup five times and the Community Shield six, but apparently it's the Premiership which matters most so this latest triumph tops the lot.

I should be exhilarated and on cloud nine but instead I'm merely a bit pleased. And this is because, as previously described, I don't have sport empathy.

sport empathy (noun): the ability to understand and share feelings of others' sporting achievements

I don't get it. Sport is just a bunch of people competing against others. I can see why winning matters if you're one of those taking part, but I don't understand the rush of emotion that comes from supporting someone else. Your team wins, you cheer. Your team loses, you mope. Your team concedes a goal, you shout at the television as if somehow they can hear you. Your team wins the cup, you float on air. Your team is beaten three nil in the very next match, your world almost ends. Your team fights a scrappy no score draw, you spend an hour afterwards debating with mates what went wrong and what tactics the manager should have adopted, the idiot, what does he know? Armchair football is an endless rise and fall over which you have no personal control. I don't get any of that.

Same with tennis, I never get engrossed in a five set tie break thriller. Same with racing, I never pick a horse and cheer them on to the end. Same with golf, I have zero emotional connection to whoever can hit the ball least. Same with rugby, you'll never find me hanging on every Six Nations result like the world depends on it. Same with boxing, the outcome of the next hyped match is a personal irrelevance. And yet some people are capable of watching almost any sport, picking a side and becoming emotionally invested in the outcome. I can't do that because I have no sport empathy.

I should say I've been an Arsenal fan for 55 years and 13 days. I've been to watch a game and been for hardcore pints in the Tollington afterwards. I even have several photos of myself wearing a red and white scarf while standing beside the FA Cup. I have an interest in Arsenal I have in no other football club because they are, self-evidently, the best team. But I am not excited by them when they triumph, nor do I ever sink into unconscionable depression after they've produced ninety minutes of disappointment.

However I looked at what several fellow Arsenal fans were saying on social media after the Premiership victory, and they had very different thoughts:

» I can't believe it - best feeling ever!
» I’m finding it hard to express how happy I am...
» This has made me cry. Amazing.
» It’s an ecstasy. A joy. A release.
» CHAMPIONS AGAIN OLÉ OLÉ

One even wrote about healing "the scars and wounds of three successive second place finishes", whereas viewed objectively being the second best team in England three years running is really bloody good. I mean, how can this run from 2004 to 2026 be seen as disastrous?

1st 2nd 4th 4th 3rd 4th 3rd 4th 3rd 4th 4th 3rd 2nd 5th 6th 5th 8th 8th 5th 2nd 2nd 2nd 1st

I'm not trying to claim that any particular approach to sport empathy is better, or indeed normal, just observing that a broad church exists. Some get passionate about sport and some don't, and it often feels like the former outnumber the latter. This seems especially evident when a significant sporting event is underway, for example the hype across the country when the World Cup is on, the collective national frisson when the Olympic medal table is updated or the widespread interest in the London Marathon, even for the also-rans.

Which made me wonder, is there perhaps a sliding scale for sport empathy? And could it look like this?

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
A P A T H Y										P A S S I O N

Imagine a sport you're really interested in and how you feel when a competitor does really well, or really badly. That should help narrow down your position on the 10-point sport empathy scale. It could be your reaction to a Wimbledon Final, could be watching the Tour de France, could be the closing overs of a test match, could be an away match at Grimsby on a midweek evening. If sport ever makes your heart beat faster you're probably on the right hand side. If no sport gets your pulse racing you're probably on the left.

I can't be a zero because I am at least interested in sporting outcomes, but my indifference to success probably makes me 1 or 2. Meanwhile the Arsenal fans I saw partying round the Emirates have demonstrated their 10-ness, this because when the most ecstatic event actually happened they embraced every emotion on offer.

A particular aspect of high sports empathy is the ability to become engrossed in any sport, not just one you normally watch. Some people can switch on Sky Sports 3 and be cheering for one side or the other within ten minutes. They, I'd say, have sport empathy in spades.

I don't know what it is in a personality that allows you to latch on to sporting achievement, and likewise those who get regularly excitable probably don't understand why I can't. And not just sporting achievement either, bear with me...

Is there also perhaps a sliding scale for religious fervour? And could it look the same?

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
A P A T H Y										P A S S I O N

Some people believe things to the core, totally swept along by the religion of their choice. Others have a strong faith but keep it more to themselves, and others just don't have it in them to believe in a higher state at all. I think I'm 1 or 2 on this scale too, having never 'got' religion despite being exposed to quite a lot of it.

I wonder if the same scale could be applied to political enthusiasm too. It's not about having strong political beliefs, it's about how emotional they make you, so for example when they announce the exit poll at the General Election do you resign yourself or do you explode.

I think I'm 1 or 2 on this scale too, whereas most of the folk on those marches in central London last weekend were the 9s and 10s. I have a theory that elections are often swung by the 8s, 9s and 10s because they have the ability to pick a side, often based on limited evidence, and then cheer them blindly on. Or maybe I'm just over-thinking this.

Whatever, some of us are hardwired to be emotionally enthused and some of us aren't. How much of society that explains is debatable, but you can see it clearly in fans' reactions to Arsenal's latest triumph, from muted indifference to unbridled passion.

maybe not HS2

2026-05-20T07:00:00.000+01:00

Something unexpected happened yesterday when they announced yet another delay to HS2.

I lost interest, because I might be dead before it opens.

According to the Transport Secretary HS2 will happen, which is good.
But it will be very very expensive and very very late, which is not.

» In 2011, the first time the government provided a prediction, HS2 would connect London to the West Midlands by 2026 and onwards to Leeds and Manchester by 2033 at a cost of £37bn.
» After the legs to Leeds and Manchester were scrapped the expectation was that the remainder between London and Birmingham would open between 2029 and 2033 at a cost of £65bn.
» The latest expectation is that the line from Birmingham won't reach Old Oak Common until [May 2036 - October 2039] and Euston until [May 2040 - December 2043] at a cost of [£88bn - £103bn].

They're giving ranges for everything now, this one of the recommendations of the Lovegrove Review which has dug deep into lessons to be learned by the Civil Service. But the earliest HS2 could reach London is now 10 years from now, and the latest it could reach Euston is 17½ years from now, by which time I might be dead.

It seems ridiculous. They'd drawn a precise line on a map thirteen years ago, which they've stuck to. They started construction six years ago and have already finished much of the infrastructure. The Colne Valley Viaduct is already complete but the first crossing is ten years off, indeed nobody's ordered any trains yet. Curzon Street and Old Oak Common stations are already substantially built, if nowhere near complete. Trams already run to the HS2 terminus in Birmingham, a mostly pointless spur until HS2 itself arrives. Demolition near Euston started eight years ago, but won't become functioning platforms until at least 14 years time. Meanwhile millions of Britons are born and die, thus 15 million of those who heard HS2 announced in 2009 won't be around to see it open.

It was mention of the 2040s that jolted me. The Bakerloo line extension also has an earliest possible completion date of 2040 but that didn't hit me in the same way. I think that's because it isn't funded thus isn't currently going ahead, hence the 2040 deadline is a shibboleth. But HS2 is currently bolted down so will at some point appear, just maybe when I can no longer ride it.

Other large infrastructure projects with a deadline in the 2030s have usually made me think "ooh that'll be good", the unspoken expectation being that I'll experience them one day. But seeing [May 2040 - December 2043] as the backstop deadline here made me translate that into ages... [75 years old - nearly 79 years old] and that proved unexpectedly jarring. What if I'm dead by then?

I'm not being morbid here, I don't have an expectation of stunted longevity, merely an understanding of probability and increased risk. Only one of my grandparents made it to 75, ditto only one parent, also I know which side of my family I take after. And whilst none of us know for sure we'll be here next week, let alone next year, it's only realistic to have more doubts about ten, fifteen, twenty years hence. I wouldn't have had doubts when I was in my 30s, thus when Crossrail was first announced I expected to ride it and nineteen years later I did. But HS2 could still be a similar margin away, and as a 61 year-old I've discovered that doubts have now crept in.

Which is annoying because I have a lot of questions I realise now may never be answered.

When HS2 reaches Old Oak Common in [May 2036 - October 2039] how will Crossrail cope? How often will trains run to Birmingham? Will you see anything out of the window or will all the tunnels and environmental barriers ensure that the journey is an unenjoyable whizz? Will fares on parallel routes to Birmingham go down, relatively speaking? Will PM Nigel Farage scrap the line or name it after himself? Will one or two new Overground stations get added at Old Oak Common? Will Rishi Sunak be barred from the debut service? What will the current wastelands south of Willesden Junction turn into? And will fares be so unappealingly high that even when it's open I won't want to pay, thus rendering my wait for HS2 irrelevant?

As for HS2 reaching Euston in [May 2040 - December 2043], I may very well not know what that ends up looking like. What will they do with the space where platforms 7-10 were originally intended to go? How will the Underground station cope? Do they really intend to hide the new platforms underground to make room for commercial development? Will they link HS1 to HS2 via a blingy subway or a crappy footpath? Will all Birmingham trains stop at Old Oak Common or will some run non-stop? Will it be possible to buy a superfast ticket for under £100, at 2040 prices? Will they have to implement time-consuming security checks that negate all the supposed time saved? Will the fare from Euston to Birmingham be intrinsically higher than Old Oak Common to Birmingham? How many coffee shops will be built on the site of the Bree Louise? Will OOC-Euston appear on the tube map, and how much of a mess will it make? Most importantly, when it's all up and running will we all think it's brilliant or wonder why on earth we bothered? I may never know.

I expect to see 2030. I very much hope to see 2035. I'd be really pleased to reach 2040. I have a suspicion I may not make 2045. I'm not confident of reaching 2050. I'm not at all confident of seeing 2055. I don't expect to experience the 2060s at all.

It's jarring to realise that many of you reading this will see marvels I will never know and witness achievements I'll never see. For balance you'll also face catastrophes I will never endure, nor even know I missed. We all get a slot on this earth and for many people HS2 now falls outside that envelope.

I thank HS2's elongated timeline for forcing me to face mortal reality, not because I expect to miss its completion but because I realise I might. There comes a time when some projects take so long to complete that we may not be around to see them finished.

Ten years together for London

2026-05-19T07:00:00.000+01:00

I spotted this poster on the platform at Theydon Bois station.

It's a message from the Mayor of London bigging up his achievements over the last ten years and thanking Londoners for the opportunity.

And fair enough, all three of London's Mayors have used TfL posters to promote themselves and what they've done, that's how the job works. But Theydon Bois is in Essex, not London, so nobody here gets to vote for him because he's not their Mayor. It wouldn't be so bad if the poster was merely informative but the wording implicitly assumes it's speaking to London residents.

These are just some of the things we've achieved together. Thank you.

I also spotted these posters on the platforms at Debden, Loughton and Buckhurst Hill, suggesting no thought had been given to the tone deaf action of placing them in Essex. It's not an uncommon issue, indeed last year I spotted a poster saying "You are Loved & Wanted in London" in the waiting room at Croxley station. If you are the minion in TfL's advertising team who decides where Mayoral propaganda posters go, perhaps read the content first before despatching them to a station outside London.

Anyway, let's look at the five things the Mayor has selected as highlights of his ten year tenure.

1) Air pollution cut by 54% in Central London thanks to ULEZ

You may be scratching your chin going "yeah right!", but all these data-driven claims are backed up in the smallprint at the very bottom of the poster. In this case it says...

"In 2024, compared to a scenario without the ULEZ, harmful NO2 concentrations were estimated to be 54% lower in Central London. Source London-wide ULEZ One Year Report."

That is a hefty healthy decrease.

Check: Did Sadiq do this?
The earliest Low Emission Zone (LEZ) was in fact introduced across London in 2008 by Ken Livingstone who slapped a £200 daily charge on the most-polluting lorries, buses and coaches. Ken also proposed extending charges to high-polluting cars and vans but Boris Johnson put that firmly on hold. Sadiq introduced the ULEZ in central London in April 2019, expanded it to inner London in October 2021 and then London-wide in August 2023. ULEZ is thus all Sadiq's doing and the data-span in the report does not extend before his tenure.

Check: What does the data actually say?
It says a heck of a lot across a 221 page report but the Mayor has chosen to focus on roadside NO2. Here he had four statistics to pick from...

In 2024, compared to a scenario without the ULEZ, harmful roadside NO2 concentrations are estimated to be:
   • 27% lower across the whole of London...
   • 54% lower in central London...
   • 29% lower in inner London...
   • 24% lower in outer London...
...than they would have been without the ULEZ and its expansions.

Naturally he picked the best one for the poster (54% rather than mid-twenties), but these are still impressive clean-ups across the capital. Politically ULEZ was a very bold move with many electoral downsides, boiling over only when outer London was brought into the mix in 2023, but Sadiq still managed to get re-elected in 2024 so I'm not surprised he's crowing about cleaner air as his proudest achievement.

2) 120 million free state primary school meals delivered

Check: Did Sadiq do this?
Introduced September 2023, so yes.

Check: What does the data actually say?
The smallprint is lengthy here because Sadiq doesn't know how many meals he's funded, he's had to estimate. Pupil numbers come from the Department of Education's school census and are adjusted for uptake of meals (which in the first year was 85%). Also between September 2023 and May 2026 no pupil could have had more than 520 free lunches, and then you multiply all that together. The Mayor funds school meals at £3 a time, so this sounds like a commitment that's cost upwards of £360m.

3) Boosted public transport, including the Night Tube, Elizabeth line, Hopper fare and Superloop bus network

Check: Did Sadiq do this?
Night Tube: Boris did all the legwork in establishing the Night Tube but couldn't get it over the line before his tenure ended due to disputes with the rail unions. With that settled the start date then was then set three months into Sadiq's tenure - so none of the effort, all of the glory.
Elizabeth line: Likewise Crossrail was a project pushed by previous Mayors. Ken was in charge when Gordon Brown agreed funding, Boris was a year into the role when construction began and a few weeks from departure when he named it after Her Majesty. Sadiq merely picked up a project that was fully underway and kept very quiet about how incredibly late it would be delivered. However, given he was in charge for the six years before it finally opened he's perfectly entitled to be very proud of it.
Hopper fare: A 1-hour London bus ticket was originally a Lib Dem policy - it appeared in Brian Paddick's 2012 Mayoral manifesto and was long pushed by Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon. But they never had any power so Sadiq stole the policy and implemented it as his own in his very first year. As Caroline said at the time, "imitation sometimes is the greatest form of flattery".
Superloop: This is all Sadiq's. Plans for ten branded express routes emerged out of the blue in March 2023 and we now have twelve, with four more in the works. However a network of orbital routes has been on the drawing board since Boris Johnson's first Mayoral election, just never acted upon, so I suspect it's been on TfL's wishlist for longer than Sadiq lets on.

4) Increased council housebuilding to its highest level since the 1970s

Check: What does the data actually say?
We need the smallprint here.

Council housing starts reached a peak of 8190 in 2022/23, higher than any number recorded since the 1970s. Source MHCLG Affordable House Supply statistics, compared with historical MHCLG and DoE statistical publications.

There are 3.8 million homes in London so I'm sorry but starting 8190 new council houses in one year feels like a pitifully small assault on the capital's housing crisis. It's the equivalent of 250 homes in every borough, so not really all that much. But these are just council homes, not necessarily affordable homes or homes for social rent because definition is all important here. What really concerns me is that the peak was in 2022/23 so numbers must have been in retreat since. Indeed I checked more recent MHCLG data and it says

4522 starts on site in London in 2024-25, a 51% increase compared to the previous year but considerably lower than the 26,386 starts on site in the region reported in 2022-23.

This is affordable housing, not just council housing, and yet 4522 is way below the 8190 total Sadiq achieved two years previously. It's also less than 20% of the 26,386 starts achieved in 2022-23 suggesting something has gone very (very) wrong with the provision of affordable housing in London. Sadiq does appear to have cherry-picked a single outdated claim for his poster and shouldn't perhaps be boasting about his most recent achievements on housing.

5) Lowest homicide rate since records began

Check: What does the data actually say?
Met Police homicide data is available online in a delightfully-named Homicide Dashboard, and is also fairly straightforward to tot up from annual murder counts. In 2025 the total across Greater London was 97, likely much lower than a lot of people assume whilst simultaneously still much too high. However it's only the lowest total since 2014, when 95 people were killed, so even if we take "since records began" as referring to a change of methodology in 2016 it looks a bit naughty.

However what Sadiq's actually claiming is the 'lowest homicide rate', not the lowest homicide total, and if you take into account population size he is indeed correct. London's murder rate is officially 1.1 per 100,000 people, lower than New York (2.8), Toronto (1.6) and Milan (1.6). It was 2.7 in London in 1997 so that's really quite a decrease.

Check: Did Sadiq do this?
You can't really tell with murders, each is a unique incident based on many factors. However the Mayor points towards his Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) "which has delivered more than 550,000 targeted interventions to prevent young people being drawn into gangs and violence", also the introduction of facial recognition technology. He's particularly proud that the number of homicides of young people in London is now a third of the total in 2019 when the VRU was set up.

Returning to the poster, there's a particularly optimistic exhortation in the bottom right hand corner to search for MAYOR OF LONDON 10 YEARS, like anyone on a station platform is ever going to do that. Searches lead to a bespoke webpage london.gov.uk/10-years-of-progress where even more achievements are set out. The Mayor's team have even gone to the effort of making a 3 minute YouTube video in which Sadiq walks round a chilly-looking Greenwich Park and showcases his extensive record. It's well made but has been up for a month and thus far only has 796 views, which just goes to show London's population aren't really interested.

However it is impressive that London's now had the same Mayor for ten years, succeeding in three successive elections... and all this self-promotion suggests Sadiq might just be positioning himself for a fourth term in 2028. If it genuinely is the best job in the world, why would you want to give it up?

Theydon Bois to Epping

2026-05-18T07:00:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I walked from Theydon Bois to Epping.

There are several pleasant ways to do this, but on this occasion I chose a three-mile dogleg via Epping Forest rather than two miles direct across the fields. I blogged these walks in 2009 and 2015 respectively, adequately at the time, so best not repeat myself. But here are several things I noted along the way in 2026 (and you can take "oh this is really nice" as read).

Theydon Bois - a quick summary
Rare example of a village with its own tube station, in this case on the Central line. The Underground's fifth least-used station, likely because the local population is barely 4000. Famously the only place on the tube without any street lights. The name rhymes with 'Boys' (whenever I blog about Theydon Bois this is generally the only thing people want to comment about). Used to have four pubs but The Railway Arms and Sixteen String Jack closed in 2011 and 2016 respectively and are now flats. A really nice place to live. The most famous resident is West Ham's boss David Sullivan who lives in a £15m mansion up the far end (and is likely very depressed this morning).

Best shop in the village?
This is hard to judge on a Sunday but contenders include Greens the Butchers, what used to be Premier Valet Services and the proudly independent Watch Service Centre. The busiest is almost certainly the Tesco Express by the Queen Victoria. A good spread of restaurants exists for those who don't fancy schlepping into Loughton. My favourite is definitely the Theydon Bois Bakery, a proper baked-on-the-premises treasure with sunburst windows, stripy awning and a giant gingerbread man standing in the window. Alas on this occasion the front display of loaves and sticky cakes was dark and the morning crowd were all round the corner gossiping outside the Brick Lane Bagel Co, which I fear will one day be the last dough-house standing.

What's the big news locally?
A plan to build on the Green Belt has locals up in arms, so much so that it gets five separate mentions in the latest village newsletter. Redrow Homes have applied to build 150 homes in two fields to the east of the railway line, whereas present housing is only to the west. Only government changes to the planning regime could override the existing Metropolitan Green Belt designation, but every available argument is being thrown at the plans in an attempt to quash them dead. Arguably this agricultural land should be preserved for future generations but also arguably land immediately adjacent to a tube station is a no-brainer for development. Indeed an aerial shot in the parish council's latest submission is supposed to show the downsides, but I couldn't help noticing that the existing village swallowed up considerably more fields, thus NIMBY residents are essentially arguing against the reason they were able to live here in the first place.

How many forest gates are there?
I've long been fascinated by the numbered signs seemingly placed at every entrance to Epping Forest, having found several during lockdown around Whipps Cross and Wanstead Flats. This one's at Genesis Slade car park, specifically number 32, Genesis Slade being the deep rivulet that flows (in damper times) from the Forest into Theydon Bois. I was thus thrilled to discover that Derek Seume has been diligently cataloguing every gate and sharing his discoveries a) on a Google map b) in a spreadsheet c) on the Instagram account @eppingforestgates. I now know that Gate 1 is at Rye Hill, the northernmost of all (just outside Harlow), while Gate 197 is at the southern tip at Rabbits Road/Manor Park Triangle. Additional gates have been added since the original designation, the highest of which is believed to be Gate 217 (Staples Road), but should you ever discover the location of gates 13, 30, 41 or 74 do please let Derek know.

Can you hear the M25?
No, it's brilliant, it's entirely inaudible even as you're crossing it. That's because, famously, when M25 engineers reached Bell Common they dug a cut and cover tunnel and reinstated a cricket pitch on the top of it. The full tunnel is 470m long, marked only by a slim gap in the Forest, and Epping Foresters Cricket Club play centrally enough that no racket from either end intrudes. I should have arrived mid-match but alas Sunday's game against Hatfield Heath was cancelled. Instead I was intrigued by the equipment at the nets being sponsored by Cracking Safes, a company founded by a retired police officer which sells un-nickable cabinets to rich folk with valuables they want to keep. It says a lot for the local population that they might indeed want to buy a premium safe including "watch winders" to keep their prestige wristwear ticking over, even in storage. Less silly mid-off, more deep extra cover.

Why does this hotel look familiar?
It's The Bell at Epping and it was in the news for weeks last summer as the site of serious anti-immigrant opposition. Formerly a coaching inn and then a hotel, The Bell was first used to house migrants in May 2020 with total numbers topping out at 138. The flashpoint arrived after one resident was arrested for sexual offences in the town, at which point the angry brigade turned up and incited further offences of their own. Epping Forest council lost their battle against the High Court two months ago and all was quiet outside yesterday, indeed I initially assumed the place was empty. But security guards were watching me as I peered through the metal railings, these liberally plastered with lots of little flag stickers (as indeed is every other bit of public infrastructure hereabouts). Take it as read that every lamppost in Epping appears to be flying at least one St George's flag, and perhaps a Sports Direct Union Jack too.

When is TG Jones closing?
No specific date has yet been given but last week the former WH Smith on Epping High Street was suddenly covered with big yellow 'Store Closing Down' and 'Everything Must Go' notices. I ventured inside to find reductions on everything from bestsellers to Post-its and boxfiles to fibretips. This year's Guinness Book of Records (rrp £22) was £6, now £4.80. A box of 30 Christmas cards was £1, now an incredible 70p. It must be gutting for staff watching unfillable gaps appearing on the shelves, and will be gutting for Epping residents trying to buy newspapers and magazines forthwith. But I also noted the store nextdoor, the Epping Mini Market, whose frontage advertises DRINKS SWEETS VAPES SNACKS because that's all most people really want to consume these days.

How bad are the buses out here?
It says a lot that the bus stops in the high street are served by 18 different routes but only six of them run more than twice a day and only three of them bother on Sundays. Admittedly the Central line is much more frequent but if you want somewhere off-tube your options are rather more limited. Local company Central Connect don't do useful overview maps either, sorry. Above is the splendid vehicle operating on route 339 which connects to the Epping Ongar Railway, generally summer weekends only. I'd seen a different 339 at Leytonstone earlier in the day, 10 miles distant, which got me wondering which Home Counties bus route is closest to a TfL route with an identical number. I'd like to suggest it might be Central Connect route 20 [Harlow ↔ Ongar] which here in Epping is just 2½ miles from TfL route 20 [Walthamstow ↔ Debden], unless of course you know different.

Saturday smorgasbord

2026-05-17T07:00:00.000+01:00

Some things I did yesterday, in non-chronological order.

🎪 I attended Cheam Charter Fair. This happens every May and has done since 1259, allegedly. I missed the mayoral procession where everyone dresses up but Park Road was still amok with folk in period costume making royal progress along the row of stalls. This is the bishop and his entourage stopping by the Brownies and offering to take some group selfies. A much better photograph would have been King Bobby VIII sat on a wall eating an ice cream cornet but I didn't risk that.

I've written about Cheam Charter Fair before so I won't go into similar detail... not that I expect you'll go back and read that so perhaps I should mention the splat-a-rat, the face-painting, the care home offering free notepads nobody was taking, the ubiquitous pot plants, the handicrafts and the extraordinary good value at the Mother's Union cake stall. It's not something worth traipsing across London for but as a beacon of annual community loveliness Cheam Charter Fair is hard to beat.

⚽ I shared a train with several Chelsea supporters, all Wembley-bound for the Cup Final, all from the team's heartland in Surrey, all in replica kit, all well-behaved, all just a little bit better groomed than supporters of most teams, of all ages from 8 to 50 and all more cheerful than they would be on the way home.

👯 I failed to board a DLR train because the rear carriage was packed with provincial daytrippers in fancy dress heading to the Abba Arena. I see a lot of this being local - a bevy of buxom folk in beads and sequins, also cowboy hats in ill-advised colours, often more Mamma Mia than proper '70s - but nothing quite prepares you for the spangled crush if you're anywhere near Pudding Mill Lane just before a show starts or just after it turns out.

🛸 I went inside Ewell library at Bourne Hall, the amazing circular building that looks like aliens have landed. Even their refreshment zone is called the Flying Saucer Cafe. I didn't go upstairs and see the museum again but that is the best reason to visit (unless you're local and have a Richard Osman to return). Stereotypical readers may like to know that a Collectables Transport Fair is being held on Saturday 13 June (a week before the Bourne Hall Summer Festival).

🎨 I noted several upcoming artistic events in the Brentwood area:
» Brentwood Arts Cinema Club present Distant Voices Still Lives, by Terence Davies, tonight at 7.30pm in the Friends Meeting House on Hutton Road
» Brentwood Musical Theatre Society are performing Evita all next week at Brentwood Theatre
» Brentwood Community Tabletop Gaming Day (Bardscon) takes place on 14th June at Bardswell Social Club
» Shenfield Operatic Society present an evening of Jazz and Cocktails at Blackmore Village Hall on 3rd/4th July
» Hutton & Shenfield Choral Society are performing Elgar's The Kingdom in Chelmsford Cathedral on 11th July

🐎 I passed a giant steaming branding iron at Waterloo station. It was promoting a TV streaming service I don't have, more specifically a new mini-series I wouldn't watch even if I did.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 I passed a few red-blooded folk on their way to the Tommy Robinson march, one barging through and fizzing with anger, also a poppy dangling from his rucksack, also a St George's flag hoisted on a four foot pole that could conceivably double up as an offensive weapon. Another man had a red Make England Great Again cap (Mega rather than Maga) and was carrying a much larger England flag with the word ENGLAND written on it just to make a point. And I thought to myself Keir Starmer may be weak and ineffective but at least he's not doing anything as destructive as this lot and their ilk will do when their favoured nationalist populist government finally gets voted in by voters seeking change "because someone else deserves a chance", maybe as soon as three years time, and then I sighed and reminded myself it hasn't happened yet.

🏆 At Cheam Charter Fair I was drawn to the tombola organised by St Raphael's Hospice and the extraordinary array of not-quite-valuable prizes laid out across their stall. Smellies, something bottled, a DVD of some kind, some sort of knitted thing... mostly giftwrapped in cellophane with ribbons. The offer was three tickets for a pound, and a prize if any of the tickets you drew ended in 0 or 5. I didn't calculate the odds in advance but I was tempted to have a go because it was all in a good cause. First ticket 375, hurrah a prize! Second ticket 252, alas no. Third ticket 125, hurrah another prize! And blimey, what prizes.

375 was a porcelain bowl with a floral motif, about four inches square, and crammed full of something. I couldn't tell precisely what because of the way the cellophane was crinkled but I initially thought pot pourri. In fact no it was a bowl of wrapped toffees, 18 in total, and could have been more had the bottom of the bowl not been deviously covered with crumpled cardboard. As for 125 this turned out to be a pink cross-stitched pocket containing a) some paper tissues b) an apple lip balm. I'm in awe of the effort some volunteer put in to create this - the needlework is impeccable - only for it to be won by some bloke who only uses cotton hankies and never uses lip balm. I do at least know someone who might appreciate it.

I have also calculated the odds since and winning two prizes wasn't quite as unlikely as I'd assumed it was.

0 prizes - 51%
1 prize - 38%
2 prizes - 10%
3 prizes - 1%

🚆 The zones covered by Oyster and Contactless have got so complicated that they now have to display this banner outside Shenfield station. I've split it for legibility.

Another way to phrase it would have been 'if you're travelling towards Liverpool Street you can tap with anything, otherwise no Oyster, also Contactless isn't valid beyond Witham or on the Southminster branch'. But I guess their version is at least crystal clear. Also there's still an announcement on purple trains approaching Shenfield saying Oyster and contactless aren't valid beyond here so leave the train, go downstairs and tap out, and perhaps someone should get round to changing that.

🎵 I enjoyed watching Eurovision with lots of memorable candidates for the top song all scoring highly, even if we did come very last, and the inevitable existential crisis was thankfully dodged for another year. Bangaranga!

Kent House

2026-05-16T07:00:00.000+01:00

This week I went to Kent House station.
And I have more questions.
Mainly one big one.

Why is it called Kent House?

It's got to be something to do with the county of Kent and a house, hasn't it?

For context, Kent House is on the railway line between Victoria and Bromley South. The stations to either side are Penge East and Beckenham Junction. It opened in 1884. It's not in Kent although it used to be. And much of this is of importance.

Where was the Kent boundary?
For centuries the counties of Surrey and Kent covered everything we now know as South London. The boundary ran south from the Thames near New Cross to a point just east of East Grinstead. In this particular area Penge was on the Surrey side and Beckenham on the Kent side (although to be upfront Penge was an administrative oddity originally classified as an exclave of Battersea and sorry, I don't have time to go into that again). This meant the Kent boundary ran really close to what's now Kent House station, indeed passed just 30m from the far end of the platforms, so something very Kenty is going on here.

When was the Kent boundary?
Yes the important bit is when. Up until 1869 the historic Surrey/Kent boundary was the historic one. In 1889 the County of London was formed and swallowed the north of Surrey, including Penge, so the local boundary was now London/Kent. Then in 1900 Penge got the chance to shift its allegiance, and wanted to rejoin Surrey but actually ended up part of Kent, hence there was no longer a boundary here. Penge stayed part of Kent until 1965 when the London borough of Bromley took over and the name Kent House thus became an anachronism. What's crucial is that Kent House station opened in 1884 when this was Kent and the adjacent boundary was with Surrey.

Is this the Kent House?
I've long thought this glorious building alongside the station might be the Kent House. It has ornate plaster twiddles, glass whorls and tiled twirls, as befits a structure of fine stature, also it appears to be older than anything else round here. But it's not a listed building despite looking like it ought to be, also it's not on the main road where you'd expect a nominal building to be, also why do the initials 'TW' appear on the facade? More importantly the date on the front of the building is 1887 which is three years after the station opened so can't be the reason for the original name. Ah well.

What's going on with the cafe?
Until the end of last year a smart little cafe called Kent House Coffee and Flowers operated out of here. The words along the window read BEER WINE COFFEE CAKE FLOWERS GELATO, i.e. essentially trying to appeal to everyone. But they closed and the place is now being fitted out by a new operation who've been busy replacing the previous black and white colour scheme with something a lot more leaf green. This fresh outfit are called At Kent House, an offshoot of Home & Happiness on Penge High Street, and this time the words in the window are COFFEE BRUNCH SMALL PLATES HOMEWARE GIFTS & MORE. It all sounds somewhat Amandaland and is opening later in the spring, having currently reached the "yes you can come in and have a look but you'll have to take your shoes off" stage of redecoration.

So what was the actual Kent House?
It was a very old house, the name having first been recorded in the year 1240. For centuries there really was nothing much else around here other than the Surrey/Kent boundary, so Kent House would indeed have been the first Kentish location encountered if approaching from the west. In 1778 historian Edward Hasted wrote...

"KENT-HOUSE is situated on the very edge of this county, towards Surry, and seems to be so called either from it’s having been once the outer bounds of this county, or from having been formerly the first house on the entrance into this parish within this county, from that of Surry. It was for some generations in the possession of the family of Lethieullier; the first of whom was Sir John Le Thieullier a Hamburgh merchant, who had raised himself by his industry in trade, and settled in this parish."

The Angersteins took over shortly after that, rich merchants from Charlton, and in 1806 it became a 178 acre farm called Kent House Farm. A contemporary illustration shows it looking rather more like a manor house than a farmhouse, with tall chimneys and a nice little urn out front. Later it became a nursing home and then the Kent House Farm Hotel, all this while the surrounding land was sold off for housing. But Kent House station opened before suburban encroachment had covered the fields, hence was the only local thing it made sense to name the station after.

How far from Kent House station was Kent House?
About half a mile to the north, reached (unsurprisingly) up Kent House Road. The houses start off enticingly Victorian, then get sturdily but appealingly interwar. Along the way is the Kent House Tavern (alas closed 2013, since unsympathetically converted into housing) and also a run of delightfully throwback shops including an upholsterer, a carpet fitter and ye olde drycleaners. As suburbia goes it's at the very appealing end of not quite posh. However the closest station to the site of Kent House is actually New Beckenham, because logic and station naming don't always go together.

Does Kent House still exist?
Alas no. The hotel was sold for housing, being a fairly spacious plot, and replaced by a run of much more modern houses and a cul-de-sac. That's Beckett Walk, a name I can find no local connection for, a brief dogleg lined by maisonettes and a couple of proper houses. I can't find a date but looking at them I'd say 1970s, give or take. Here I found fresh-mown verges, almost-mature trees and a gentleman sat reading the paper on a chair in his front garden, most surprised at being disturbed. It's a shame that absolutely nothing of Kent House lingers on, save in the name of a station no longer in Kent, but if you rewind back to 1884 it does at least make a bit more sense.

Where Wes Streeting lived

2026-05-15T07:00:00.000+01:00

Wes Streeting wrote an autobiography a few years ago, which given recent events may turn out to have been somewhat premature. In it he recounts his turbulent childhood in Tower Hamlets and subsequent political awakening, with rather more on the former than the latter. Wes's Dad was from a longstanding Bow family based just off Roman Road, while his Mum spent her earliest weeks in Holloway Prison before her family moved to Stepney Green. I nipped up to 46 Armagh Road where his paternal side originated but Tower Hamlets council demolished those terraces 50 years ago so no luck there.

However the book contains enough detail to identify several homes Wes lived in locally, all of which are still standing, so I set off on what can best be described as a Wes Streeting orienteering exercise. Starting here.

Born: Mile End Hospital, 21st January 1983

This former workhouse infirmary lurks round the back of Queen Mary University up Bancroft Road. Wesley Paul William Streeting arrived on a Friday lunchtime after a lengthy labour, the relationship between his parents already teetering. The name Wesley came from Wesley Jordache, a character in the 1976 American mini series Rich Man Poor Man. As for his middle names Paul was Mum's brother (who'd died aged six while walking alone to the shops in Brockley) and William was the name of both of Wes's grandfathers, two gentlemen very much chalk and cheese.

Taken first to: 18 Walter Besant House, Bancroft Road, Mile End

First stop after ten days in maternity was Wes's Dad's home, 200 yards up Bancroft Road. The Streetings had lived here since the demolition of Armagh Road in 1976, a two-bed maisonette on the third and fourth floors of a typical Tower Hamlets block. In those days it was possible to nip upstairs without accessing a security gate. Today the family nextdoor display a Palestinian flag on their balcony, a bit further along is the cross of St George and the residents of number 18 have simply hung a 'Home' roundel on their replacement PVC door. This particular granddad Bill was a smartly suited man who volunteered with the Scouts and also a strong supporter of Margaret Thatcher, even if he never bought his council house.

Went home to: 47 Crofts Street, Wapping

This was the home of Wes's other grandparents and the first place Wes and his Mum made their home. Wes slept in a drawer from the dresser for the first few days. This is borderline Wapping, at the far western end near St Katharine Dock and the former Royal Mint. It's also a proper redbrick council house, not a stacked flat, on a small characterful estate of little alleyways, green spaces and private parking lots. It even still has the off-red Wapping Neighbourhood signs the Liberal Democrats introduced in the late 1980s, admittedly now very faded but I don't think I've seen a full set like this anywhere else.

Nanny Libby was very much the Labour supporter, a campaigner for social justice and a foundational political influence. Grandad Bill on the other hand was an East End rogue who knew the Krays and undertook a number of armed robberies while wearing a rubber mask and wielding a shotgun. He spent a lot of time in prison, so much so that Wes often didn't see him for a year, and wasn't averse to stealing a car just to drive the family to the seaside. Nan had only been to prison once but shared a cell with Christine Keeler and the two remained friends afterwards. If Wes's life story ever makes it to a biopic, there'd be plenty of meat to it.

First proper home: 22 Clichy House, Stepney Way

When Wes's parents decided to make a go of their relationship they wangled a council maisonette in Stepney. It's so close to the Royal London Hospital that you can see the blue tower and helipad at the end of the road, not that either were there in the 1980s. Clichy House is a very typical Tower Hamlets block - 24 flats with zero individuality, a row of lockups out front and either a tiny garden or a teensier balcony depending on which floor you're on. All the blocks round here were given names with a French theme. Alas the family soon ended up in debt and the couple split, so Wes grew up here with a single mother eking out a living as a silver service waitress, or whatever was going. Only once did armed police raid the flat looking for Wes's grandfather - an indignity no previous Prime Minister has suffered.

Off to school: Old Church Nursery School, Stepney
Off to school: St Peter's C of E Junior School, Wapping

Wes's first school was a small four-classroom affair close to St Dunstan's church and Stepney City Farm. It's well-fenced these days, substantially shielded by a massive boxy academy and accessed down an odd leftover of a cobbled street. Wes loved dressing up and reading Ladybird books, and hated not being able to buy sweets on the way home because his family was skint. For primary school Wes hoped to go the the local church school but, scuppered by not actually being Roman Catholic, ended up trotting down to St Peter's in Wapping instead. Here he was a bit of a swot, enjoyed acting, met his best friend Luke and was pushed by headteacher Mrs Dodd to get a place at Westminster City for his secondary education. The school is still used as a polling station and it may encourage Wes to hear that St Katharine's & Wapping was the only ward in Tower Hamlets to return two Labour councillors last week.

Second proper home: 23 Jamaica Street, Stepney

In 1994 the Streetings were shifted to yet another maisonette in yet another council block, this time a massive one. At least it was on the ground floor so had a garden, not that you can do much in five metres by three, and also central heating so very much a step up. Council flats were always let empty in those days so a lot of time was spent adding carpets, wallpaper and appliances, also the electricity meter couldn't be fiddled so power cuts were now a regular issue. These days you can't get round the back without a keyfob, the abandoned Ford Transit outside is 'Council Aware', and basically don't head to mid-Stepney if you appreciate good architecture.

Meanwhile at Dad's house: 5 Digby Gardens, Dagenham

Wes's parents splitting meant he often spent the weekend with his Dad in Dagenham. Finally a proper two-bed house not owned by the council, although this being the Becontree estate it had been once. Finally a proper garden, finally a cul-de-sac he could play out in, and finally a chance to go to Sunday School like the good little boy he was. Around this time he got another brother, indeed he has five and a sister as a byproduct of several step-parents over the years. It's a bit scrappy up Digby Gardens today, not helped by the pebbledash nor the fact that number 5 has a skip outside with several doors dumped in it. Also the front door was open so I can say I've seen the stairs Wes climbed on Saturday evenings and that's no idle boast.

And then a pub: The Crown, Roneo Corner, Romford

Dad Mark eventually quit his job as a shipping clerk to train as a publican with the Scottish & Newcastle, ending up running the big pub on Roneo Corner in Romford. After various housing issues Wes ended up living here full-time in one of the four upstairs bedrooms, with leftover Thunderbirds wallpaper and syrupy Coca Cola on tap. It meant a protracted commute to school but it was better than following Mum to Epping, Archway and ultimately Preston, also it was possible to snaffle profiteroles from the pub kitchen without ever getting caught. These days the pub doesn't bother opening until 3.30pm on weekdays and also has a Quality Seafood cabin out back, as befits a community that's fled from the East End.

Wes's biography doesn't give the location of his final teenage home in Upminster Bridge, and after that it's all working in McDonald's (Romford), going to university (Selwyn Cambridge) and entering politics (via the NUS and Redbridge council). But I'd seen enough on my safari to realise that this was one hell of a nomadic dysfunctional childhood, held together only by family members doing their best. By following him from Mile End to Stepney, Wapping and Dagenham, in council houses recent Prime Ministers would never have tolerated, the fact he ended up supporting Labour was never really in doubt. It's not yet clear if Wes has shot his bolt too early, or indeed has all the support he says he does, but if he does end up in Number 10 I really can't work out which of these very minor homes is best deserving of the blue plaque.

fifteen million

2026-05-14T00:15:00.000+01:00

15000000: Sometime this evening, probably around eight o'clock, diamond geezer will receive its fifteen millionth visitor. More accurately it'll be the fifteen millionth time that an archaic stats package has registered a unique visit, which very much isn't the same thing, but I think still very much worth celebrating.

Fifteen million visits is an astonishing total - the equivalent of everyone in the Netherlands reading my blog once. But viewed another way it's not much - on average three busy tube trains of readers a day.

What I do know is that my audience has been coming faster.
The first million took five and a half years.
The last million's taken eleven months.

0	Sept 2002
1000000	April 2008	5½ years
2000000	Jan 2011	2¾ years
3000000	Oct 2012	1¾ years
4000000	Apr 2014	18 months
5000000	Aug 2015	17 months
6000000	Dec 2016	15 months
7000000	Feb 2018	14 months
8000000	Apr 2019	14 months
9000000	Jun 2020	14 months
10000000	Jul 2021	14 months
11000000	Aug 2022	13 months
12000000	Aug 2023	12 months
13000000	Jul 2024	11 months
14000000	Jun 2025	10 months
15000000	May 2026	11 months

I can also do that as a graph.

For the first decade and a half the graph was a curve because my readership was (gradually) growing, with the fastest spurt in the pre-Olympic heyday of 2011/2012. But since 2018 it's become much more of a straight line because my readership's levelled out, with each successive million taking about approximately one year.

That's good because it means I'm not haemorrhaging readers, but also bad because I'm no longer gaining a wider audience like I used to. What I seem to have is a long-standing core readership, cheers, with a few new regulars who somehow stumble here balanced by others drifting away. In a resolutely post-blog era it could be a lot worse.

However the jump from 14 million to 15 million is the first time a million's taken longer to reach than the million before. What's more my stats package suggests a number of these so-called visitors have been 'bad bots', zapping in to crawl my content and digest it elsewhere. It's less than 5% of the total but enough that the 15 million milestone would otherwise have been reached in June, not May. It all suggests that the number of humans reading this blog is alas going down, indeed diamond geezer may have peaked.

Each time one of these millionaire milestones rolls by I like to look back and analyse which sites my readers have arrived from. For the first ten years this meant a league table of top linking blogs, ordered by volume of visitors clicking here from there. This used to be hugely important back in the era when blogs thrived solely because other blogs linked to them, but times change.

Blogs no longer have a fraction of the traction they enjoyed a decade ago now that social media is king, because the ability to drive traffic has shifted away from those who generate their own content towards those who merely digest the content of others. I've thus had to broaden this category to all forms of social media including Twitter, Facebook etc.

Here then is the latest update of my Top 10 linkers across the last 24 years, i.e. 2002-2026.

  1) Twitter
  2) Reddit
  3) Ian Visits
  4) Hacker News
  5) Facebook
  6) Londonist
  7) London Reconnections
  8) Girl with a one track mind
  9) Feedly
10) Random acts of reality

Twitter is top by miles with over 10% of all blog referrals. And that's old-school Twitter, not Elon Musk's X variant which has become tumbleweed, thus my @diamondgzrblog account now generates minimal interaction. Reddit is second with 5% of referrals, none of it my doing, instead courtesy of kindly souls who suggest I've written something interesting and very occasionally a lot of people turn up. They used to turn up more often before most of London's tube geeks were siphoned off into a minor subreddit, so its second place is again mostly a reflection of past supernovae.

The first proper blog appears at number 3, the inimitable Ian Visits who's kindly nudged visitors my way for well over ten years, especially as part of his Friday rail news round-up. Hacker News are an American aggregator portal who've only sent people here a dozen times but in such huge numbers that they're fourth. Facebook is a mystery because I'm not on there but people must still be posting links to the blog on a fairly regular basis. The rest of the top 10 includes two London-based behemoths, two blogs that went quiet years ago and Feedly, an RSS portal whose readers come here (I suspect) mainly to read the comments.

n.b. The next ten linkers include the blogs London Daily Photo, Blue Witch, 853, Aslef Shrugged, and Tired of London Tired of Life, all bar one of which are either long defunct or on hiatus.

My five most clicked posts since 10 million
1) The History Trees in the Olympic Park (May 2022)
2) Where is London's most central sheep? (Jan 2025)
3) Asbestosis killed my grandfather (Oct 2025)
4) Strange places to see London's Roman wall (Nov 2025)
5) Television is 100 years old today (Jan 2026)

Before you get the wrong idea I should say the vast majority of my fifteen million readers didn't click in from anywhere, they rely on force of habit. I've hit this milestone by being reliable rather than clickable, because there'll almost certainly be a new post to read every morning which hopefully you'll want to read. As far as I can tell at least 90% of you currently arrive off your own bat, not because something elsewhere directed you here... although that's probably how you ended up at diamond geezer in the first place.

Also I know that a lot of you read the blog without actually visiting it, courtesy of my RSS feed, which makes a mockery of attempting to count visitor numbers anyway. I probably passed fifteen million several months ago, maybe even years back, but didn't realise.

So I don't mind where my fifteen million came from, nor that I can't count you all, I'm just well chuffed that you still bother turning up. Thanks to all of you, and here's to millions more...

Update: the 15 millionth visitor arrived at 9.06pm breezing in via Sky Broadband from somewhere in London, no referrer, just a traditional one-off diamond geezer reader, cheers!

Pizza maths

2026-05-13T08:00:00.001+01:00

Today's maths comes to you courtesy of Wembley Master Chef, 44 Harrow Rd, HA9 6PG.
This Pizza Deal poster appears in the window.

That's good value, isn't it?
Well let's check...

First let's scale that down to the cost of one pizza, not two.

Diameter	Price
7 inch	£3.75
9 inch	£4.95
12 inch	£6.95
15 inch	£8.45

We can try to find the best value pizza by calculating price per inch.

Diameter	Price	p per inch
7 inch	£3.75	54p
9 inch	£4.95	55p
12 inch	£6.95	58p
15 inch	£8.45	56p

This suggests the 7 inch pizza is the best value at 54p per inch.
But they're all remarkably close, each just over 50p per inch.
It almost looks like this is how they determined the prices.

But pizzas aren't linear, it's the area that increases.
Please ignore everything in the previous table, it's mathematical rubbish.

We could try to estimate the area by counting the number of pepperoni slices on each pizza.

Diameter	Price	no of slices	p per slice
7 inch	£3.75	12	31p
9 inch	£4.95	26	19p
12 inch	£6.95	32	22p
15 inch	£8.45	35	24p

This suggests the 9 inch pizza is the best value at 19p per slice of pepperoni.
The 15 inch pizza might look more packed but its slices are 24p each.

However this is also mathematical rubbish because you can't just go by photos.
In particular the 12 inch and 15 inch pizzas are shown pretty much the same size, and they're not.
My suspicion is that these pizza images aren't real, merely AI conjuring.
So we can't use fictional pepperoni slices to calculate best value either.

What we should be doing is calculating the area of each pizza in square inches.
It's good old A=πr².

Diameter	Price	Area	p per sq in
7 inch	£3.75	38 sq in	10p
9 inch	£4.95	64 sq in	8p
12 inch	£6.95	113 sq in	6p
15 inch	£8.45	177 sq in	5p

That's more like it.
The 7 inch pizza is the worst value at 10p per square inch.
And the 15 inch pizza is the best value at 5p per square inch.

This is because a 15 inch pizza is a lot bigger than it sounds.

Diameter	Area	compared to 7 inch
7 inch	38 sq in	×1
9 inch	64 sq in	×1.7
12 inch	113 sq in	×3
15 inch	177 sq in	×4.7

A 15 inch pizza is almost 5 times the size of a 7 inch.
But at Wembley Master Chef the price is only roughly double.
So if you want best value cheesy pepperoni stodge, go large.

I also checked the cost of buying these pizzas online. Ouch.

Diameter	Shop deal	Online order
7 inch	£3.75	unavailable
9 inch	£4.95	£8.90
12 inch	£6.95	£11.90
15 inch	£8.45	£14.90

The last column is even if you order online and collect it yourself.
In each case you're paying 75% extra for the privilege of ordering online.

So at the end of all that, two conclusions.

1) Larger pizzas are much better value.
2) Don't order online.

And not just at Wembley Master Chef.

#busnatter

2026-05-13T07:00:00.001+01:00

#busnatter
The Mayor is introducing a Weekend Hopper fare in the summer.
It means you'll only pay one fare to ride buses and trams all day.

But it's only for six weekends (25 July - 31 August)
But also Bank Holiday Monday, so better than that
But that still only makes 13 days of actual savings
But what a great PR stunt, making bus travel more affordable
But bus fares are already capped (at three fares daily)
But that's £1.75 × 3= £5.25 so not necessarily cheap
But basically all this does is save £3.50 (i.e. a coffee)
But if you used it every weekend you could save £45
But nobody actually makes unlimited bus journeys every day
But it is green and skewed towards less affluent Londoners
But it's hardly "a whopper of a deal", it's peanuts
But children already travel free on buses anyway
But don't gripe, any saving can only be a good thing
But what a waste of scarce public funds this is
But they reckon it'll only cost the Mayor £20m
But why are they announcing this now, it's ten weeks away!
But it might help some families make school holiday plans
But seriously, why are they over-promoting it so early?
But Sadiq has only promised to freeze bus fares until July
But it would be cynical to suggest this is a mere distraction
But maybe it's good news now ahead of bad news later
But it might encourage a few people to travel a bit more
But wow what a lot of publicity this tiny thing has got
But try not to get the top seat behind the frog's eye

Londonmaxxing

2026-05-12T07:00:00.008+01:00

This is the 11,111th post on diamond geezer

On Sunday I finally visited Cocksure Lane in North Cray.

I'd been intrigued by it on a map for years and now finally I was here.
A country lane off a country lane in a seriously peripheral part of London.

On Saturday I snapped this shot while walking down Grand Avenue in Tokyngton.

Sometimes the best views are in the most unlikely places.

And yesterday I had 25 minutes to wait for an Overground train.
So rather than wait on the platform I went for an explore.
And that's how I found myself in Keats Close in Ponders End.

Rather fewer delights there, but another street in the capital ticked off.

I have, over the last 25 years, been to a heck of a lot of London.
And I wondered, how many people have been to more of London than me?

To be clear that's the whole of Greater London, not just zones 1 and 2 in the middle. A lot of people have done Kensington, Islington and Southwark but rather fewer have put in the legwork in Ruislip, Hainault and Purley. London isn't merely a Square Mile, it has an area of 607 square miles and a lot of people have never seen the half of it.

I'm sure loads of people have been to more pubs than me. When it comes to football stadiums, shops and restaurants I bet I'm soundly beaten. But when it comes to average residential streets, footpaths and all - the very meat of suburbia - I'm sure I've trodden more pavements than most.

I've been to Harrows Meade in Edgware, Rogers Road in Dagenham, Doris Avenue in Barnehurst, Gibbons Road in Neasden and Worlds End Lane in Chelsfield. I've walked the Blackberry Path in Cricklewood, Pig Farm Alley in Sutton and Hutchinsons Bank in New Addington. I have yet to tackle Cow Path in Elmstead or Emperor's Gate in South Kensington but, like Cocksure Lane, they could always be on a future list.

When I say 'been to' I'm happy to include all forms of transport, even trains if they're above ground and you've bothered to look out of the window. Most car owners will only have seen the main roads unless they drive for a living. Yes buses are better at nipping down the lesser streets, and yes cycling can down lead you down some proper backways. But if you haven't explored widely on foot you won't have sunk your teeth into a neighbourhood properly, and I have done a heck of a lot of exploring on foot.

It helps that I've been to every station in London and ridden every bus route too. I haven't ridden the full extent of every bus route because that would be purgatory but enough to know what the backstreets of Greenford look like, also Orpington and Hounslow. I've also been to every single 1km grid square in London - it was my post-lockdown project - and I do genuinely think nobody else has ever done that.

You may assume I've been everywhere but don't overestimate my reputation purely from what I've written. There are still tens of thousands of streets I've never walked down, thousands of footpaths I've never followed and dozens of parks I've not yet stumbled into. There are apocryphal tales of people walking every street in London but I don't believe anybody ever has, except within some much smaller confined locality.

As an example, here's a map of where I've been in Poverest. If you're already thinking "where's Poverest?" then QED, I have been to more of it than you.

I've explored Robin Hood Green, climbed Englefield Rise and ridden the bus round Avalon Road. I've looked in on Beril Cafe, Poverest allotments and Fordcroft Romano-British Bathhouse. As you can see there are a lot of streets I've never been to, indeed a majority, so if you live round here you'll have beaten my total. But I bet I beat 99% of Londoners with my Poverest tally, and there are hundreds of other London neighbourhoods to take into account too.

I am arguably wasting my life by exploring London like this. I could have been having a nice day out yesterday rather than accidently stumbling upon Keats Close, or even stayed in and watched Netflix rather than giving in to pointless wanderlust.

So I wondered, have any of you have been to more of London than I have?
Also how many people overall have been to more of London than me?
Also who in the long history of our capital city has seen the most of Greater London?
And could that person possibly be me?

Update: No, it's not me, A runner called James Salmon is systematically visiting every street in London and recording his route via an app called CityStrides. He started in April 2021 and in the last five years has run along 29,023 of the 39,451 streets listed in London. He spent Sunday running 12 miles round Wanstead. You can view his map here and it is astonishing! However because he's working sequentially he's barely touched Newham, Barking & Dagenham, Havering, Bexley or Bromley yet, indeed he's done none of Poverest whatsoever. Arguably I have the better spread, for now, but by 2028 James's achievement should be maximal and unbeatable.

J is for Joyden's Wood

2026-05-11T07:00:00.236+01:00

LONDON A-Z
J is for Joyden's Wood

My next alphabetical destination proved a conundrum because no London suburb starts with J. The Ordnance Survey maintains a list of "populated places", 681 of which are in the capital, but that alas jumps straight from Islington to Kenley. Only four of the placenames even include the letter J, these being Clapham Junction, St James's, St John's and St John's Wood, none of which count as little-known locations. So I've had to plump for Joyden's Wood instead which is in Kent, or at least the vast majority of it is.

Joyden's Wood is a vast tract of ancient woodland partially devoured by suburbia. You'll find it between Old Bexley and Swanley, safely tucked between the A2 and the A20. The first building work hereabouts was the Fæsten Dic, a mile-long defensive earthwork believed to have been built by Kentish Saxons in the 5th century. The earliest medieval settlement was a manor house called Baldwyns, this sold off in 1894 to create a large mental asylum, then in 1924 a wedge of woodland was appropriated to create the Baldwyns Park estate. Considerably more land was given over to housing after the war, this where you'll now find a library, two primary schools, three dozen streets and a chip shop. This is the suburb now generally known as Joyden's Wood, almost all of which is on the Kent side of a district boundary that once ran almost unnoticed through the woods.

I have instead set myself the task of documenting the London side of the divide which alas includes only a quarter of the wood, all on the unpopulated side, plus six cul-de-sacs, a couple of country lanes and a lot of places where horses live.

The wood
Joyden's Wood is a fabulous place to explore, especially at present when its many weaving paths aren't the usual mudbath. Find one of the handful of entrances and you can lose yourself in a forested wilderness, ideally following the broad tracks or minor sidepaths rather than the outer loop of churned-up bridleway. Expect to meet dogwalkers doing a circuit, although rather fewer on the London flank because there's nowhere to park, or if you're lucky absolutely nobody at all. The woods didn't always look like this, the Forestry Commission got somewhat over-zealous planting pine trees in the 1950s, but the Woodland Trust have done a good job of thinning them out again.

I made my way from the perimeter to the path that most closely tracks the Greater London boundary. To my right a break in the wire fence led off to a steepish climb beneath a thickening canopy, the wood's character very much a consequence of its endlessly undulating contours. Birdsong accompanied me along the way, half of it from Kent. Birch trees occasionally (and unnervingly) creaked in the wind. Just off the main track I found a deep sandy dell, crossed a dried-up a stream on a bridge of logs and stumbled upon the last of the season's unshrivelled bluebells. I did not find the wooden fighter plane, the boardwalk or the Saxon earthwork because they're on the wrong side of the line (as previously enjoyed).

Another wood
Gattons Plantation is an adjacent woody oblong, also with a Joyden's Wood sign on the gate but entirely separate. You get here along Parsonage Lane, a proper winding lane liberally dollopped with manure. They totally love horses out here, with any land that isn't woody having been taken over by paddocks, stables and riding schools, also irregular detached houses inhabited by folk who enjoy a ride. As London goes, this edge of rural Bexley is beyond atypical. For the plantation turn right into Cocksure Lane and look for the swing gate into 35 acres of dense oak cover and undergrowth, passing a ripped-up poster on Coppicing before you start your circuit. I'd tell you more but this is probably more North Cray than Joyden's Wood and I might need that for N.

More stables
Stable Lane is well named because Mount Mascal Stables is tucked away down the far end. Again it's notionally in North Cray but because Joyden's Wood is immediately adjacent I'm totally including it. MMS is massive, a warren of paddocks, barns and outbuildings with copious car parking, plus the underlying smell of soiled hay. A public footpath passes through so I got to see small children taking trotting lessons while proud parents watched on, also dressage arenas with letters round the outer rails, also smiling passengers arriving for a 90 minute hack or a Standard Pony Party. This is how the active equestrians of DA5 spend their weekends.

Further up the lane are occasional sprawling cottages, a half-occupied business estate and a permanently closed nursery (perennials, not toddlers). I passed a sign saying 'New Laid Chicken Eggs £2.00 box of 6', just before the man whose chickens they were emerged and took his half-dozen back indoors. The only modern intrusion is the entrance to an electricity substation, a chicane of barriers and warning-strewn fencing leading to a huge fizzy grid cunningly concealed in a grassy dip. Hurst 275Kv Substation is one of the stopping-off points for the London Power Tunnels 2 project, a 20 mile high-voltage connection between Wimbledon and Crayford which went live hereabouts last summer. I should have guessed it was important from the glare the security guard gave me when I took a photo of his portakabin.

The other lane
Tile Kiln Lane is proper ancient, the original link from Bexley to Baldwyns and still the same width too. It climbs and curls between stone walls, then up past yet more horses and the entrance to a single private cottage. Vehicles are barred from the central stretch, a part-grooved lane encroached by twiggy trees where you could imagine it's still the 18th century. Alongside is a meadow called Coldblow Field because this smidgeon of outer Bexley generally goes by the Coldblow name, but I shall be claiming the next suburbanised quarter mile as proper Joyden's Wood because its houses were built when all this was incontrovertibly Kent.

Residents of this mix of bungalows, townhouses and squished detacheds get to vote for London's Mayor but pay for it by having a ULEZ camera perched at the entrance to their mini-enclave. In the grounds of St Barnabas Church I found a mysterious knobbly boundary marker rusting away in one corner, also a coal tax post so peripheral it occupies a sawn-out slot in somebody's garden fence. The last cottage before Kent is the oldest by far, a hexagonal oddity with a thatched roof which was formerly the lodge for the big manor beyond. The bus stop outside has a B12 tile saying 'AM only' because it's part of a unique TfL loop that operates clockwise before noon and anti-clockwise after. Pictured is the last bus before the switcheroo (although it's actually timetabled for twelve minutes past twelve).

The shops
The Kent side of Joyden's Wood has most of the shops but the Bexley slice does merit one short parade, so close to border that there's a coal tax post outside the Chinese restaurant. The salon nextdoor recently switched from curlers to skin fades while the dry cleaners at the far end sold up in 2019 and is now a kebabbery. Astonishingly one shop still specialises in TV sales and satellite repairs, admittedly now doubled up with a strong sideline in vapes. But the finest shopfront here must be that of Modern Screws, still ready to sell you a pack of steel pop rivets or a Grub Screw Micro Assortment, even if its '60s typeface immediately contradicts the 'Modern' half of its name. There is much of joy in Joyden's Wood, even on the flank that's barely Joyden's Wood at all.

London Cable Car

2026-05-10T07:00:00.076+01:00

The Dangleway no longer has a sponsor.
You'd be forgiven for not noticing.

For ten years the cablecar was sponsored by a Middle Eastern airline and then, in a baffling marketing switcheroo, by a cloud-based software solution for enterprise resource planning. If a single company executive ever took their offspring for a ride and was moved to switch their AI data platform to IFS Cloud I'd be amazed.

IFS Cloud had a five year sponsorship deal so could have continued until October 2027 but instead decided to break early. According to Ian Visits they pulled the plug on 18th March, since when the Dangleway's name has officially been 'London Cable Car', all branding deleted.

You can check this by going to the TfL website.
The status page used to show 'IFS Cloud Cable Car status' but now shows 'London Cable Car status'.
The cablecar homepage used to be full of IFS Cloud references but now there are none.

The London Cable Car crosses the River Thames between Greenwich Peninsula and the Royal Docks, just 5 minutes' walk from The O2 and North Greenwich Underground station.

IFS Cloud would have appeared three times in that last sentence and now it's zero.

As far as I can tell, the big switcheroo occurred around 16th April.
And yet the old name lingers on.

I nipped down to the north terminal which should by now be called Royal Docks but instead has the old name everywhere.

The big letters on the terminal building still say IFS CLOUD ROYAL DOCKS, even though it would be quite easy to take the first eight letters down.

The terminal still has a massive purple IFS Cloud CABLE CAR lozenge on the exterior.
All the dangleway cabins are still wrapped in IFS Cloud branding.
All the fare posters are still IFS Cloud branded.
The lifts are still covered with purple cloud stickers and the IFS logo.
Royal Victoria DLR station is still absolutely plastered with IFS Cloud posters.
Even the fake gondola you're supposed to take photos in still has the @IFSLondonCableCar hashtag.

It does say Welcome to the Cable Car as you walk in, but even that's not the right name.

I wondered whose fault this was.
Shouldn't the sponsor pay to remove their branding official period is over?
Well actually no, I checked the 2022 contract and these signs aren't their responsibility.
Instead it says "TfL/DLR to arrange at its own cost" for every aspect of the on-site branding.
It seems TfL are just being lazy, or else they don't particularly care.

The old names also still appear on the tube map.
It's still IFS Cloud Cable Car on the paper tube map because that's not due an update until the summer.
Ditto all the posters on platforms - IFS Cloud continue to get free advertising there.
Oddly the online maps haven't been updated either, despite the fact this would be easy.

But it is London Cable Car on all the signage on trains and at stations, comprehensively so. This has been the case since April 2022 when TfL decided it would be cheaper long-term to make every enamel sign and line diagram sponsor-free. That way they don't have to go round and put stickers on everything every time a sponsor departs, a decision which has just been proven to be very sensible.

All I can say is well done to IFS Cloud because they stopped paying for all this advertising two months ago but TfL are still screaming their name across the entire physical Dangleway and its two terminals. For an organisation obsessed by brands it's a peculiar misstep.

And don't expect another sponsor because it seems TfL are planning on taking a fresh approach, focusing more on temporary activations and seasonal chutzpah.

Here's what legendary Dangleway topdog Danny Price has to say.

"As both the Cable Car and the sponsorship market have evolved, so has our approach. Rather than entering into a new contract with a named sponsor, we will now focus on a number of short-term creative partnerships that help us celebrate the seasons, major events and cultural moments in the capital."

Oh god.

"This commercial decision is aligned with increased demand from brands to run shorter, more flexible, experience-based activations, and operating without a named sponsor will mean that the London Cable Car is a more attractive proposition for these partnership activities."

If you thought recent sponsorship blasts from Guinness and Warburtons on the tube were gauche and ill-judged, brands will now have the option of smothering the Dangleway in collateral instead, where thankfully most Londoners are unlikely to see it.

Also TfL recently issued a contract opportunity seeking partners to work with them on 'London Cable Car Customer Enhancements'.

"Transport for London (TfL) are exploring plans to enhance the London Cable Car, which connects the Royal Docks and Greenwich Peninsula. Following recent strategic work confirming its role as a predominantly leisure-focused destination, TfL intends to refresh the visitor proposition to enhance the customer experience, extend visit duration, increase revenue and strengthen the Cable Car's position in the London leisure market."

There you go, confirmation that TfL have given up on the Dangleway as a method of useful public transport and are going all out on pumping tourists and sightseers for cash.

"TfL are considering procuring a delivery partner (or partners) to provide concept design, detailed design and build services for a programme of enhancements. These include improvements to the overall customer journey and a potential transformation of the South Terminal into a more immersive, experience‑led environment."

Oh god.

Imagine approaching your gondola ride through a swirling light tunnel backed by a pumping disco beat while a brand of orange juice exhorts you to share a selfie with their chosen campaign hashtag. It'll likely be more ghastly than that, but it'll be a while before we have clarity on quite what Boris's aerial white elephant is going to evolve into. Do come back and join me in ripping the piss whenever this new immersive reality emerges.

London council elections 2026

2026-05-09T07:00:00.199+01:00

London council elections 2026

				Enf Noc
		Harr	Barn Noc	Hari Noc	WFor Gain
Hill	Eal	Bren Noc	Cam	Isl	Hack Gain	Redb	Hav Gain
Hou	H&F	K&C	West Gain		Tow	New Noc	B&D

	Rich	Wan Noc	Lam Noc	Sou Noc	Lew Gain	Grn	Bex
		King	Mer	Cro Noc	Bro
			Sut

the big changes
          Hackney: was Lab 52 Con 5, now Grn 42 Lab 9 (Labour since 2002)
         Havering: was Con 23 Ind 20, now Ref 39 Ind 14 (Reform's first London council)
        Lewisham: was Lab 54 (clean sweep), now Grn 40, Lab 14 (Labour since 2010)
Waltham Forest: was Lab 47 Con 13, now Grn 31, Lab 15 Con 14 (Labour since 2010)
    Westminster: was Lab 31 Con 23, now Con 32 Lab 22 (also Conservative 1964-2022)

Three of the gains are by the Greens, one by the Conservatives and one by Reform.
Six different parties are in control across London.
The only 'clean sweep' council is Richmond which is 100% Lib Dem.
Havering is the only borough where the number of Reform councillors reached double figures.
Four years ago Labour won 21 councils outright, this year only nine.

slipping into No Overall Control
Barnet: Con 31, Lab 31, Grn 1 (Green councillor holds balance of power)
Brent: Lab 26, Lib 11, Con 11, Grn 9 (Labour three short)
Croydon: Lab 30, Con 28, Grn 8, Lib 2, Ref 2 (Conservative Mayor in charge)
Enfield: Con 31, Lab 27, Grn 5 (Conservatives 1 short)
Haringey: Grn 28, Lab 20, Lib 8, Ind 1 (Greens 1 short)
Lambeth: Grn 29, Lab 26, Lib 8 (Greens 3 short)
Newham: Lab 26, Ind 24, Grn 16 (Labour Mayor in charge)
Southwark: Lab 29, Grn 22, Lib 12 (Labour since 2010)
Wandsworth: Con 29, Lab 28, Ind 1 (former Conservative councillor holds balance of power)

Four years ago only Croydon was No Overall Control. This year there are nine NOC boroughs.

For an excellent clickable map of all the results, see smallsites.london/Election2026.html.

five Mayoralties

Cro

Hac
Gain

Lew
Gain

New

Tow

Croydon was very close: Con 31%, Lab 30%, Grn 17%, Ref 13%
Hackney's gone very Green: Grn 47%, Lab 35%
Lewisham went Green too: Grn 40%, Lab 35%
Newham stayed red: Lab 30%, Ind 24%, Grn 23%
Tower Hamlets re-elected Lutfur: Asp 39%, Lab 21.1%, Grn 20.9%

In Tower Hamlets it would have taken the combined vote of Labour and the Greens to oust Lutfur Rahman, so he's safely back for his fourth term.

The last government ended Supplementary Votes in Mayoral elections.
This year it's First Past The Post, so you get what you get.
(but it'll be Supplementary Vote again next time because the law changed last week)

The Conservatives won the Croydon Mayoralty by just 1100 votes.
In 2022 second preferences narrowed the Con/Lab gap in Croydon by 1600 votes.
So it's entirely possible that Labour would have won this year under the old system.

Meanwhile near London
Lib: West Surrey, East Surrey, Watford
Ref: Thurrock
Con: Broxbourne, Harlow

Meanwhile in Birmingham
Ref 22, Grn 19, Lab 17, Con 16, Ind 13, Lib 12, tbc 2
which is an uncoalitionable six-way mess

8pm update
Tower Hamlets council seats have finally been counted.
Lutfur's party Aspire has taken the lion's share of seats, 33 out of 45.

Labour and the Greens each took 5 seats on a near-identical share of the vote.
All the Green seats are in Bow, indeed all Bow's councillors are Green.

The Stratford & Bow constituency spans two boroughs.
It currently has a Labour MP.
However as of today it only has one Labour councillor.
16 of the constituency's 22 councillors are Green.
So I guess that makes us a top Green target in 2029!

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.