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108. The clock at Ruislip Manor

17 June 2013
Metropolitan line, Objects, Piccadilly line, Zone 6
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Face of surpriseIf I’d only waited a few more minutes. For then I could have trotted out the old “stands the clock at ten to three?” doggerel, and I’d have had a not-at-all-hoary-and-cliched opening remark all ready made.

But no. I’d already loitered a little too long for comfort in the ticket hall of a station a little too empty of people to not draw too much attention to my endeavours. I had to grab what time I could – which, in this instance, was 2.40.

This way to LondonThe simplicity and the economy of the clock’s design is entrancing. There’s no room for superfluities like letters or – heaven forbid – numbers, because there’s no point.

As I’ve said before, a glance at a clock face is all most of us ever need (or have time for, ahem.) It follows that the essentials of a clock can, if done sensitively, become components of a broader statement, not merely of information but of style.

Those small circular daubs of colour: look at them, as John Betjeman would say. Do you see how they subtly echo the Underground roundel, in particular the ones positioned at each quarter-hour?

And that stencilled instruction “To London”: surely a reminder of how remote and isolated Ruislip still was when the station was rebuilt in the late 1930s?

Perhaps most striking of all is the colour. You don’t get this much cream in one dose in many Underground stations. There’s enough to rival the total tonnage of afternoon teas in Grantchester.

Which reminds me…

98. The station at West Finchley

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

96. The memorial at Canning Town

11 April 2013
Designs, Jubilee line, Numbers 91-105, Objects, Zone 3
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Canning, you dig it?Here’s an example of how great the Underground can be at commemorating not just its own past accomplishments, but those of other, equally influential giants on whose shoulders London once stood.

In one corner of Canning Town station rises a memorial that’s vast in both size and significance. Hewn from the iron hull of HMS Warrior, then clad in dozens of concrete panels, each in turn covered with a cascade of calligraphic prose, it is an elegy to an organisation, a trio of industries, and a way of life long gone.

London 0, Hull 4The Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company lived for almost 100 years and died two years before Britain went to war (in part thanks to the threat from someone else’s ironworks and shipbuilding). The First Lord of the Admiralty, a certain Mr W Churchill, refused to step in to save the company in 1912 when work dried up.

But the football club established for the works’ employees, Thames Ironworks FC, did survive and still does, under the name it adopted to allow it to hire professional players. And it was the management and supporters of that club who, many decades later, helped commission and fund the creation of this memorial. Fittingly, they get a special mention:

HammersBy my count that’s at least two lasting contributions West Ham United have made to the culture of the nation; the other being their popularisation of this beautiful song.

As for the memorial, the designer Jamie Troughton and engraver Richard Kindersley must take the main honours for realising West Ham’s dream and turning an idea into something so defiantly solid. The concrete panels were apparently so expensive that Kindersley and his helpers could not, or more accurately weren’t allowed to, make a single mistake. And they didn’t, even if it meant it took three weeks for the inscriptions to be completed.

Their collective effort is stunning and soaring. Its calligraphy whirls and shimmies around three flights of steps, not merely bringing but whipping and rocketing the past back to life.

My only regret is its location. It’s tucked away at the far end of the concourse, on the way to Canning Town bus station, and very easy to miss. I speak from experience: I only found it on my third visit. But Iif I’d been a bit more patient I probably would have worked out what to do – for example, ask someone where it was.

End of daysRather wonderfully, the very latest chapter in the evolution of London’s public transport – the magnificent Crossrail – has resulted in some of the Ironworks’ remains being uncovered. Slices of old London do have this habit of poking through into the here and now; at Canning Town one of them has achieved permanence at last.

The official history of the Jubilee line extension notes that the memorial drew a lot of local interest on its opening in 1999. It also reveals that former Archbishop of Canterbury and now full-time reactionary George Carey did the unveiling. He was born nearby, so his involvement was not entirely spurious.

I wonder if he ever passes this way nowadays, and if so what he makes of the memorial’s sparkling reams of inclusive, enlightened sentiments.

Pride