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Central line

80. The ticket hall at Loughton

28 January 2013
Architecture, Central line, Numbers 76-100, Zone 6
2 Comments

Through a glass darklyWho says Essex can’t do style?

It may sit in one corner of a thumpingly charmless concreted cul-de-sac of a car park, with an enormous branch of Sainsbury’s eyeing it threateningly across legions of preeningly-customised vehicles. And it may have to put up with neighbours the likes of a flower shop called, with devastating imagination, The Flower Stop, and a barber’s called, fatalistically, Homme Fatal.

And it may not look in the best of shape, with peeling paint and grimy walls and a sorrowful sense of clinging to its own self-worth in lieu of anyone else extending it much care or attention.

But Loughton station nevertheless defies the broad brushes of ridicule slapped over the surface of its county’s reputation to remain one of the Underground’s noblest of suburban outposts.

Three gracesBrick, concrete and glass: the holy trinity of Underground architecture.

Or, if you’re not of an ecclesiastical bent, the three graces. The three coins in the most fulsome of public transport fountains. The Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka in the constellation of London conurbations. The Holland-Dozier-Holland of…

OK, OK. Just three damn good things, used in a damn good way. Like here at Loughton, in the Grade II-listed ticket hall designed by John Murray Easton, opened just 12 days before Hitler invaded western Europe:

Three: the magic numberEaston was pencilled in to redesign all the stations on the Central line extension (previously the London & North Eastern Railway) from Woodford to Ongar. This is the only one he managed to see built, thanks to the Third Reich going on manoeuvres. It’s a massive shame, as the rest of this stretch of the line is decidedly underwhelming by comparison (it gets better – much better – back in zone 4).

Once again I wonder what railway users of the 1940s made of such grand architecture in such galling times.

I like to think they took to it instantly and enjoyed it as much as I do today, the magnificent arched window crouching above the entrance making you feel like you’re walking into some kind of box of delights (which you are).

Instead it probably got best-known as a place that provided a rich resource of nooks and shadows to trade gammon and cammy-knickers.

Much like present-day Essex*.

Postscript: looking back through photos I took of Loughton station in 2008, I notice the flower shop used to be called Pot a Fleurs – ah, such sweet pretension! – while the barber’s went by the rather dowdy name of Sideburns. And they ditched that for Homme Fatal?!

Turn Your Head and Coif*SATIRE.

60. The concourse at Gants Hill

26 October 2012
Architecture, Central line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 4
6 Comments

Gants for the memoryArchitecture was one of the few things the Soviet Union got right*.

For Cold War connoisseurs, a quick flash of a Zil lane or a snatched view of a towering tenement can stir the senses almost as potently as the opening of The Third Man or that bit in Octopussy when giant red arrows run amok over western Europe.

But Londoners don’t have to rely on photographs or travel brochures or even journey all the way to the former kernel of the Warsaw Pact to get a whiff of your actual Comintern chintz.

A whole 50 years before Sting and Billy Bragg tried to promote detente through song, the staff of London Underground were doing just that with slide rules. The likes of Charles Holden gave the Soviet authorities a big hand in helping realise the Moscow Metro, the first dazzling chunk of which opened in 1935.

With its gargantuan vaults, colourful tiling and chandeliers, it’s easy to understand why it proved so popular with the locals: here, at last, was a socialist paradise that a) most people could afford and b) didn’t involve mud and marching about.

Holden and co didn’t have a trouble-free trip to the USSR, being (inevitably) accused on several occasions of spying, sabotage and good old-fashioned imperial treachery. But Charles went on to commemorate the experience in a station on our own London Underground – one that, ironically, it took the assistance of Stalin and several million Russians to get finished.

More than a Hill of beansWithout the efforts of the USSR in helping win the second world war, Gants Hill station may never have got to look like this.

It was started before 1939 but got put on hold for the duration of the conflict, bits of it ending up doubling as air-raid shelters and workshops for the manufacture of munitions. Only when war was over could Holden resume work and put the finishing touches to one of his greatest creations.

Vaulting ambitionIt’s maddening that such a fabulous building is not right in the heart of London where millions could and would lap up its majesty. Instead it’s tucked away on a branch of the Central line up in Redbridge.

How typical of someone like Holden to lavish such charm and imagination on a place so far from the ostensible “cultural heart” of the capital. How frustrating for someone who wishes they could sit and gaze up at its spectacular design more regularly than once every few months.

Still, Holden’s magic is scattered liberally through suburbs all round the outskirts of Greater London, so if you’re one of those who – wisely – lives at safe remove from the city centre, you’re never that far from a slice of wonder. Somewhere like Gants Hill confirms my prejudices about all the best Underground architecture lying far outside Zone 1.

Up the uplighterI could go into even more detail about Gants Hill, but I’ve already saluted its platform clocks and miniature roundels, and if I didn’t stop now, I wouldn’t know where to.

Ура!

*That, and not killing Shostakovich. Oh, and turning their ships around on 25 October 1962.

32. The miniature roundels at Gants Hill

3 July 2012
Central line, Designs, Numbers 26-50, Zone 4
2 Comments

Baby roundelLike a film camera slowly pulling back and building up for the big reveal, I am holding off from celebrating the full glory of Charles Holden’s Gants Hill for a just a bit longer.

Instead, after first concentrating on the platform clocks, I have zoomed out a little more, to bring into view the dainty Underground logos that sporadically line the walls of the station’s concourse:

Vaulting ambitionlgnore, if you can, the plastic bag lying on the floor and focus your gaze on those tiny Underground symbols embedded within the tiles on each of the pillars. They deserve their own moment of glory. For I imagine they are barely glimpsed, at least knowingly, and let alone acknowledged.

Granted, these petite designs can’t really complete with what else is going on by way of architecture inside Gants Hill (of which more another time). Yet in their own way they are discreetly charming and rather becoming: attributes to which all the very finest parts of the Underground successfully aspire.

They’re also cute, in a statutory kind of way. Apologies if that sounds vaguely perverse. But I do love Gants Hill station. It’s the Muscovite modernist monolith that keeps on giving.

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