Archive

Northern line

107. The maze at Warren Street

16 June 2013
Designs, Northern line, Victoria line, Zone 1
4 Comments

Warren's treatWarren’s Treat was the name of a novel I almost started writing in my 20s. I thought the title was terribly witty, likewise the idea that everyone in the book would be named after a London-based railway station.

Naturally, I now see that the whole concept was shockingly pretentious and am glad I didn’t have the time, or more correctly the commitment, to get round to doing anything about it. It would also have been a bit too close to this slice of audio horror for comfort.

A much more agreeable application of the station’s name can be found on the walls of the Victoria line platforms:

A maze in graceAlan Fletcher conceived the maze, he of the V&A logo, Penguin book covers, the BP petrol pump and just about every significant example of public British graphic design of the 1960s and 70s.

The “warren” is supposedly possible to navigate in around three minutes. But this does presuppose you have reason to be on the platform for around three minutes, which given the frequency of Victoria line trains isn’t always the case. It’s more suited for idling away gaps in the service, or if you find yourself stuck in the station waiting for a train further up or down the line to sort out a problem with its doors. (Or rather, sort out a passenger who’s created a problem with the doors, usually by TRYING TO ENTER THE CARRIAGE WHEN THEY’RE CLOSING.)

There’s also the additional hazard of someone deciding to sit down right in front of the maze. It’s a little unfortunate that the designs are embedded directly above benches. A woman sat down seconds after I took these photos, and I had to stop myself from scowling (yes, hard to believe).

Yet despite all this I think we can all agree it’s a far more successful manifestation of London transport wordplay than a book with characters such as Rick Mansworth, Colin Dale, the Scottish tearway Cal E. Donian, and the eccentric preacher Canon Bury.

Do not sit here

98. The station at West Finchley

21 April 2013
Architecture, Northern line, Numbers 91-105, Objects, Sensations, Zone 4
4 Comments

It always would beHe adored West Finchley station.

He idolised it all out of proportion.

No, make that, he romanticised it all out of proportion.

To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a place that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of something by Dennis Potter involving trains and tragedy, and which allowed him shamelessly to reference one of the finest opening sequences in cinema history, despite not having anywhere near the same style, wit or imagination.

Yes, he was too romantic about West Finchley. Yes, to him it was also a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. And yet, in its own restrained, sparse, under-used, over-played, half-arsed, romanticised, metaphorical way, West Finchley was his station… and always would be.

Coming up rosesI’d like to think everyone in London has special feelings towards their local Underground station. I’d like to think those feelings are mostly good-natured, though I’ll readily concede that’s not easy when your local station is Gunnersbury, Seven Sisters, or anywhere on the Bakerloo line north of Kilburn Park.

At the time of writing, my local station for five years has been West Finchley. I make no bones about the fact it was one of the reasons I chose to live in this area of north London. And I retain the same gushing affection towards it as I did the first time I ever had cause to pass along its platforms.

It’s not a very busy place. It’s staffed for only two hours on weekday mornings. At off-peak times, I’ll often find myself the only person waiting to get on a train, or the only person to get off. In both instances a part of my brain buried deep from any passing relationship with reality pretends it is me and only me for whom the station exists.

A berry peculiar practiceFruit grows on the platforms of West Finchley. In summer, roses caress the barbed wire. In winter, robins perch on branches a few feet from your face.

All the functional furniture of an overground Underground station – trackside cables, wires for the loudspeakers – is tucked out of sight behind bushes and trees. The automated announcements are turned down low out of respect for the residents of nearby houses. There are waiting rooms on both platforms, with electric fires. And there are toilets and pocket maps and guides for continuing your journey and benches and buttons to press for help in an emergency and a lovely great big old iron bridge that used to have a lovely great bit old iron sign above it:

KINGS + St PancrasThere’s also – shush! – a secret entrance. Transport for London describes West Finchley station as step-free, but unless you’re aware of the narrow passageway from an adjacent street that lets you on to the southbound platform, it’s the bridge or nothing.

To make this secret entrance even more of a secret, it’s only open for a couple of hours each morning. The rest of the time you need a special key to unlock the gates that guard the entrance. Such an arrangement could only exist, or rather only exist unnoticed, in a place like this, where things crossfade quietly between the quaint and the eccentric.

Tracks of my yearsI’ve published this photo on the blog before, but I’m giving it another outing as I think it sums up for me what is the ultimate appeal of West Finchley station: its homeliness. Even in as extreme a concoction of weather, season and hour as this, the place still feels welcoming. It is safe and reassuring. It is somewhere you know you can trust. And, of course, for me it means just that: home.

I hope other people share similar sentiments about their own local station. West Finchley isn’t particularly special in the way most of the things on this blog are, in the sense of boasting great architecture or locations or even sensations. But it has the ability to be special to me. I might romanticise it out of all proportion, but that doesn’t harm anyone except myself. Which is what, ultimately, makes it so great.

86. The platform murals at Charing Cross

23 February 2013
Designs, Northern line, Numbers 76-90, Zone 1
7 Comments

Commuter rage: it's been going on for centuriesDavid Gentleman’s designs for the walls of the Northern line platforms at Charing Cross, aside from suggesting that commuter rage dates back almost eight centuries, are a triumph from start to finish. And that’s a very long triumph, stretching as they do from one end of the platform to the other, and starring a cast of hundreds encompassing peasantry to pageantry, with the occasional pick-up en route:

Are you going my way?Are you going his way?

Strictly speaking, the murals retell the story of the construction of the eponymous cross, built in 13th century on the order of King Edward I as one of a number in memory of his wife Eleanor of Castile.

But if you fancy a more figurative interpretation, the designs reflect anybody and everybody who travels on the Underground. The range of character types is so broad it’s almost always possible to find one that, if not directly resembling yourself, at least reflects something of your mood:

We've all been thereAs we go about our toil, so does Gentleman’s ensemble, from the most humble to the most holy.

You may only grab a blur of images as your train rushes in, pauses then hurries off. Or you may have time to spy a face or feature that stays with you, in turn capturing a moment out of your day and elevating what can feel a mundane business – getting from A to B – into something a bit magical:

Gentleman nails it Close-up, you realise it’s not just human beings that benefit from the artist’s bracing, characterful style:

Symbolism a-go-goI reckon this is the murals’ greatest strength: the vivid personality of its subjects. These are historic events drawn in a very contemporary way. The scenes don’t seem rarefied, done for abstract contemplation. They’ve been leavened with a universal humanity.

Admittedly the amalgamation of unwelcome if necessary everyday ephemera sometimes looks, literally, rubbish:

A bit (of) rubbishBut then you also get this, the Northern line roundel, popping up in wonderfully unlikely situations:

Manna from heavenFrankly, who wouldn’t want to worship such a divine manifestation?

The murals are one of the few things London Transport got right in the 1970s. They date from when Charing Cross was reworked as the terminus of the newly-extended (and newly-named) Jubilee line, and when all the messy jostling of stations separately called Trafalgar Square, Strand and Embankment got tidied up.

It can’t have been easy persuading the LT suits of the merits of such an aesthetic investment. But then, as the murals show, we all have our crosses to bear.

B-b-b-b-build