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Zone 4

46. The uplighters at Southgate

3 September 2012
Numbers 26-50, Objects, Piccadilly line, Zone 4
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An uplighter shade of paleI was chased out of Southgate station for taking this picture.

It’s bemusing how arbitrary the “rules” about photography inside the Underground are implemented. In most locations staff turn a blind eye. In some they even look on with encouragement, especially at the station I’ve earmarked for number 50 (spoilers!).

But there have been a few – and only a few – where stern gazes have been topped with stern words, and on one occasion, here at Southgate, stern actions. I was followed back up the escalator and off the premises, my behaviour judged disruptive enough to merit the kind of treatment I’d expect to see  meted out to a bottle-wielding stoner than a camera-wielding loner.

The whole episode rather spoiled my appreciation of the uplighters at Southgate, which only now, several months later, I realise are utterly gorgeous.

Fifty-two steps to heavenThey are originals – survivors of the inter-war years, stoical and mute, speaking volumes but saying nothing. They radiate history as well as illumination. They inject a dose of the exotic into the otherwise pedestrian business of moving between daylight and the deep.

Slack, drool... illuminations!They are also products of the delicious imagination of Charles Holden, the man who dreamed up the station’s brave, eternally-beguiling exterior.

An exterior I got to know rather better than the interior.

33. The viaduct at Arnos Grove

6 July 2012
Architecture, Numbers 26-50, Piccadilly line, Zone 4
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I dream my dreams awayWhen the Piccadilly line was being extended northwards from Finsbury Park to Cockfosters in the early 1930s, the planners faced the challenge of how to get round, get over, or even avoid completely the Pymmes Brook valley. It being the early 1930s, however, this was seen not so much as a vexatious conundrum but a delightful problem meriting an equally spirited solution.

This turned out to be an absolutely enormous viaduct made of 34 arches, opened in 1933 and an instant architectural landmark. It’s still breathtaking today, even if it doesn’t quite live up to the suburban idyll suggested in the initial marketing:

Bridge of sighsFor one thing it’s not nearly that high:

A river runs through itNor is it possible to get that clear a view of the trains passing overhead:

Southbound trainHowever you can wander at will among the magnificently imposing and meticulously aligned arches, whose nooks and crevices conjure up a deceptively never-ending maze of brickwork:

A maze, amazingIt is also, like its cousin in the Dollis Brook valley, an Underground highlight that’s not best appreciated when you’re actually on the Underground. You need to leave the train, indeed leave the station and network entirely, to savour the viaduct’s full splendour. Which it’s well worth doing, even if the reality doesn’t quite match the artist’s impression. But then when does it ever?

The real thing

32. The miniature roundels at Gants Hill

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