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Yearly Archives: 2012

68. The wall stencil at Stepney Green

24 November 2012
Designs, District line, Hammersmith and City line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 2
1 Comment

A big hand, pleaseStepney Green station opened in 1902, and while the booking hall still boasts many of its original fixtures and fittings, for me the best spot in the whole building is – as with so many locations in life – halfway down the stairs.

Here you’ll find, stencilled on to the wall, a fading but impressively legible instruction to anyone confused as to where they should progress having purchased their ticket, and to those also curious as to where this angled sequence of steps may conclude.

The vintage of the stencil isn’t obvious, but the lettering suggests something richly antiquated and the whole design is saturated with nostalgic charm:

All in the wristLondon’s Underground: it isn’t really anywhere, it’s somewhere else instead.

67. The old entrance to Highbury & Islington

20 November 2012
Architecture, Numbers 51-75, Victoria line, Zone 2
1 Comment

EntrancingAnother rule I’ve adopted for this blog, but which perhaps I ought to have made clear earlier, is that I’m not bothering with disused stations.

That’s not because they’re not great, don’t cut it architecturally, can’t hold their own against current stations, or don’t command a rich enough history or atmosphere.

No, it’s simply because if you start, where do you stop? I could fill a good third of my 150 with parts of buildings or sites of former buildings or buildings that used to be this but are now used for that, and so on.

Besides, I’ve always intended this to be a celebration of living things, rather than the dead or dying.

So as I said, no disused stations.

Apart from this one.

Bury nice, thank youI’m allowing it for two reasons: one, it’s an old entrance to a current station (an exemption I’ve made once before); and two, the building is still in use: it contains signalling equipment for the Victoria line.

It also happens to look absolutely gorgeous, having had its 1904-vintage exterior restored in 2006. That lettering is simply beautiful. There’s astonishing attention to detail, both in the graceful curves and exquisite finishing. It’s an alphabetical soupcon of yesteryear.

Meanwhile the present entrance to Highbury and Islington faces opposite, across the road, and looks awful.

I know which side of the street I’d rather be on.

The sunny side of the street

66. The platform tiles at Aldgate East

18 November 2012
Designs, District line, Hammersmith and City line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 1
13 Comments

Give my regards to (55) BroadwayIt was only a matter of time before 55 Broadway, administrative headquarters of London’s Underground since the 1930s, cleared its throat on this blog.

But I hadn’t expected it to do so as a wall tile on a platform at Aldgate East. And a pretty impressive one at that, nicely capturing the building’s mix of enduring majesty and shameless self-importance.

The tile is one of a number of designs embedded sporadically, almost whimsically, along the side of both platform walls. They lure your gaze away from the all the familiar apparatus of an Underground station and occupy you with something new, something unexpected, something… a little baffling:

Hats off to WestminsterOK, so that’s the Houses of Parliament, and that’s a crown, and that’s another crown, and that’s… a bowler hat?

And while this looks like a coat of arms, perhaps belonging to one of the counties through which the Underground passes…

A call to arms …heaven only knows what this is:

Erm...It’s a bit like the sort of half-arsed monster that frequented Peter Davison-era Doctor Who episodes, but sporting a face that looks like a character from Once Upon A Time… Man.

I think we’re on safer ground with this one:

Yes, againThe S stands for Stabler – Harold Stabler, the designer who worked on the remodelling of Aldgate East station in the 1930s, and who helped established and popularise the influential ceramics company Poole Pottery.

Stabler’s tiles are charming little bulletins of whimsy from a time when art could be both stylish and fun. They elevate a rather humdrum station into something teasingly special. They’re also the smallest things – so far – to merit an entry on this blog all to themselves.