120. The entrance to Park Royal

30 July 2013
Architecture, Numbers 101-125, Piccadilly line, Zone 3
3 Comments

A right royal treatRoyal parks are ten-a-penny in London, and they’re all much of a muchness. Grass, basically. Maybe a monument. Someone pissing against a tree.

Park Royal, however, is one of a kind. And it outranks anything vaguely regal-sounding in the entire city – and that includes carriages, babies, those godawful face masks, and the Queen.

Its entrance is grander than any palace, more dazzling than any crown, more uplifting than any pageant, and more thrilling than the twitching of any uterus.

As far as I can tell there’s never been a fly-past, a million-strong crowd waiting outside, or Brian May standing on top playing the guitar.

I would happily stand on top playing the guitar, but I fear a repertoire that encompasses everything from Radio Song to the Marrow Song would prompt any passing million-strong crowd to subject me to a kind of Wicker Man-style immolation inside the tower.

Geometry-a-go-goIf you can have such a thing as a garland of geometry, this is it.

The station looks like the toy box of a five-year-old with a 55-year-old’s sensibilities. It shimmers and swirls with flair and derring-do, even though it is utterly immobile (but oh how I wish that circular platform revolved, like the old restaurant at the top of the BT Tower).

It’s not the work of Charles Holden, but rather Herbert Welch and Felix James Lander: a couple of architects Holden sub-let the work to in the mid-1930s, content they’d do the job in a “suitable” style. Which they did – effortlessly, and not with a little nerve.

If Holden wasn’t jealous, he should have been. Park Royal challenges (but doesn’t quite topple) the likes of Arnos Grove and Southgate for a place in Zone 1 of the Underground firmament.

Were I to ever become the benevolent dictator of Greater London, and I think there’s still time, this station might well be my seat of rule. It’s got the swagger, it’s got the class… and look, there’s even a tower in which to lock up anyone who opposes Crossrail or HS2*.

To the tower!*Only joking. I’d stand on top of the tower, look down on them, and giggle. Before playing another chorus of the Marrow Song.

119. The roundel at Burnt Oak

29 July 2013
Northern line, Numbers 101-125, Objects
3 Comments

Oak, hey!There’s no burned oak at Burnt Oak. There’s not much to the station either, which is a squat pavilion a bit like Brent Cross and Hendon Central, only not as noble or elegant. What there is, however, is a roundel on a pole.

That might not sound much, but believe me, when you’re standing outside Burnt Oak station with 95% of your vision choked up with tat, grot and litter, it’s a revelation.

Even the design of the pole is appealing. It’s vaguely Eiffel-esque, with the struts climbing upwards in a pleasingly ordered fashion, tapering inwards towards the centre of a satisfyingly chunky roundel. The very top looks a bit like a flagpole, but how you’d raise anything up it is a mystery. Although given the whole structure already raises the spirits, I’d argue no further kinds of elevation are necessary.

There’s an added treat when you’re down on the platforms. A gap in the bridges overhead reveals a glimpse of the pole, which from this angle looks even more commanding.

It almost makes up for the station’s gratingly archaic name. There’s really no call for words ending “rnt” nowadays.

Up the pole

118. The memorial plaque at Barbican

20 July 2013
Circle line, Hammersmith and City line, Metropolitan line, Numbers 101-125, Objects, Zone 1
5 Comments

RIPI love cats as much as I love the Underground, cups of tea, Carry On films and other things of varying shades of embarrassment.

But I’m forever disappointed at how badly cats, specifically those who make their home in a particular location, get immortalised for posterity.

Contextualised felines fare especially badly in popular music. Stray cats don’t count. I’m referring to ones who make a specific place their stamping, or rather padding, ground. I can’t find a trace of any song called Station Cat*, the creature doesn’t turn up in the schoolyards remembered by Cat Stevens or Paul Simon, while Farmyard Cat by Prefab Sprout is easily the worst song Paddy McAloon has ever written.

Thankfully there’s at least one cat whose legacy lives on in words, if not in music. Pebbles gets a touching tribute at Barbican station, whose platform nooks and walkway crannies he made his home for many years until his death in 1997.

For part of his life Pebbles had a cohort called Barbie, with whom he apparently shared the run of the station, but about whom no mention is made on the memorial plaque. Both cats were due to appear at a ceremony in 1997, where Pebbles was to have been given some sort of lifetime achievement award before being photographed with Patrick Moore and a gaggle of GMTV presenters.

At least death spared him, and us, this indignity. Instead he remains, to this day, “greatly loved and missed by station staff and customers.” Even by those, like me, who never met him.

*Once I’ve finished all 150 entries, I might remedy this.