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District line

61. The Thames crossing at Putney Bridge

29 October 2012
Architecture, District line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 2
2 Comments

Nought but crossesFor the most part, all you get to see of the Thames while on an Underground train is its reincarnation as a cartographically-challenged blue line on a map above the head of the person sitting opposite. And even this wasn’t possible for a short period a few years ago, before wiser heads prevailed and all was soon again for the best in the best of all possible diagrammatically-realised worlds.

It’s even more exciting, therefore, when the actual Underground meets the actual Thames in the open air, which it does only twice, at Kew and here, by Putney Bridge station.

This is the Fulham railway bridge, whose splendour can be sampled either when you’re rattling over it or, and this is the real treat, ambling alongside it. For not only is this a rail crossing, it is also a pedestrian crossing, thereby allowing the spectator a close-up view of London’s two most agreeable forms of transport going about their business atop each other.

That’s not meant to sound voyeuristic, though frankly anybody loitering in a place like this with a camera isn’t exactly an innocent bystander. And yes, I did have to do quite a lot of loitering to get a shot that was free of people using the bridge for walking rather than ogling.

See? Span!It was designed by a former assistant of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and it shows.

Iron works - as it always doesThe bridge was built between 1887 and 1889 for the London and South Western Railway, and got sympathetically refurbished just over 100 years later. It’s still in pretty good condition, and bears the twin reassurances of intelligent craftmanship and tasteful embellishment.

By defying logic and allowing your brain to process information from an illogical point of view, i.e. suspended above water, bridges inevitably alter your mood. A bridge that doesn’t entertain a continual procession of traffic, with unending, uncompromising noise, leavens this process with beauty.

In a location like this particular Thames crossing, in the silences between the romantic roar of passing trains, notions percolate, fancies take hold and ideas take flight.

Like how the river commands a pace of life unlike anywhere else in London. Like how it has become inseparable from people’s internal imprint of the Underground.

And like how it’s fun to have carriages pass alongside you above eye level: a hedgehog’s view of a train, only safer.

Mind THIS gap

59. The decoration outside Barons Court

21 October 2012
Architecture, Designs, District line, Numbers 51-75, Piccadilly line, Zone 2
2 Comments

Barons' green backAutumn seems to suit Barons Court. I’ve been here at other times of the year and felt the station’s exterior looked a bit leaden and grubby, or too bland and sterile. But the soft light and sharp contrasts that you get on a sunny autumn afternoon flatter the place incredibly. The beauty of all the tiny details on the station’s rather intimidating walls is deepened, and the splendour of the building’s design is served up to you in generous, mellow-toned slices.

Court-ing complimentsPerhaps you need a particular kind of sunlight to pick out the care that has gone into the lettering on the station’s signage. Maybe the colour of the brickwork only comes into its own when shot through the prism of a bright October rather than a blistering July or dank December. Or perhaps it’s just that the building’s subtle hues sit best among the equally understated atmosphere that percolates right through this most gentle of seasons.

The effect is evident in the decoration both on the station’s front, and on – ahem – Barons’ green back. Good grief!

Crumbs!It’s all Grade II listed and was all the work of architect Harry Ford. It is stylish, and it is lovely, but it isn’t, as writer Mark Mason contests, “the most beautiful station not just on the London Underground, but in any world you, I or anyone else could possibly imagine.” Oh no. That honour lies elsewhere, with a station I’ve already celebrated here, and to which I’ll return again.

57. The bridge at Kew Gardens

12 October 2012
Architecture, District line, Numbers 51-75, Zone 3, Zone 4
1 Comment

Kew E. D.Bear with me on this one.

I accept it might not look particularly attractive, or even create a fleeting impression of attractiveness. You might think it looks unarguably dull, or at the very least utterly unexceptional. I accept it’s probably not the sort of place you’d want to linger, even when – as here – the sun is bathing everything in a flattering, early autumnal glow.

But for all this, the passenger footbridge at Kew Gardens is rather special.

The more you linger, the more curious it looks – and feels. It’s possible to sense something a bit alien, a bit foreign about this bridge. The shape, the colour, the materials… none bear traces or motifs of homegrown architecture. There is nothing familiar in the structure, no parochial reference points in the design. There is no tang of London oozing from the brickwork.

What’s it doing here? And in Kew Gardens, of all places?

I mean, look at it:

Kew jumpingOf course, there’s a switcheroo coming up, and here it is.

Precisely why it is so unusual is precisely why it is so fascinating.

A nearby plaque explains all. The bridge was opened in 1912 and is a hugely rare and very early example of one made from reinforced concrete, using a technique pioneered by the French engineer François Hennebique. That feeling of other-worldliness starts to make sense.

Moreover, it was deliberately designed (I’m not sure who by) with those unusual high walls and those odd projections out of its sides in order to protect its users from smoke and dirt coming from passing steam engines. How thoughtful – and how daringly continental. There can’t have been many people native to Edwardian Britain believing that passengers ought to take precedence over machinery.

The whole thing was done up in 2004 thanks to English Heritage, the Kew Society and numerous other benefactors, including every person who’s ever played the National Lottery (that’s how the heritage fund works, isn’t it?)

Heaven knows what it looked like before its makeover – less attractive certainly, but also probably less intriguing. Even the furnishings seem to have scrubbed up well:

Hooray for the blue, white and redAll in all, a most agreeable form of Kew jumping.

Did I mention the views are pretty damn special as well?

Form an orderly Kew