IanVisits…

As part of the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Air Force as a distinct military unit - there will be a flypast over London tomorrow (Tuesday April 1st) by the infamous Red Arrows - and it is going almost directly over my house!

The flypast starts out at Felixstowe, then heads in a straight line Westwards to fly over the MoD building (and the London Eye) at 1pm.

I expect it to go over Canary Wharf at about 12:55 - so get those cameras ready!

The full route, which includes flying past several other RAF locations can be found here

This is really good for me, as most flypasts tend to line up with the Mall, and while I can see them from my flat - it is a bit far - whereas this one will be directly overhead. Yay!

I have been meaning for absolutly ages to take a look at a little bit of London Underground heritage at Bank Station, and total thanks to problems with the Jubilee Line, I happened to be at Bank today and going past the tunnel in question when I finally remembered to take a look (and had my camera with me).

I use Bank station so often, and keep forgetting to take a look at this - and as much of the station may be closed for a year from next month - some urgency had arisen in my quest.

The bit of heritage is the remains of the Greathead steel shield which was used during the tunelling of the original Waterloo & City Line in 1898 and like most tunelling shields, it was abandoned in the soil once the tunelling was over.

It was unexpectedly rediscovered some 90 years later during the extension of the DLR to Bank - and it was left in place in a new tunnel linking the station with the W&C line. There is a small plaque beside it to explain its significance, although I would be surprised if anyone notices in the morning rush hours frankly.

This is how the shield would have looked when in use - yes the tunneling was still done by hand, not machine.

A couple of close up images:

Last night I wandered along to the V&A for one of their Friday night events, mainly for a couple of exhibitions on “vanishing London” and “Buildings that were never built”. Both hosted by RIBA, and despite allowing a suggested hour+ for the exhibition, I have to confess that I was only there for half an hour max.

I did ask if I could take some photos of some of the pictures of the grand unbuilt buildings, but absolutely not! However, they did point out that most of them are available on the RIBA website, so I took as many notes as possible so that I could do some searches this morning.

I have a bit of a thing for “big buildings”, so here are a few that I could find which really interested me last night.

One which is quite famous and you may have seen elsewhere is this monstrous structure which was planned to go up next to the Palace of Westminster (click on all images for larger versions). This was a proposed design for the Imperial Monumental Halls and Tower - drawn in 1904 based on designs by Edward Beckitt Lamb and John Pollard Seddon.

Here however, is a less often seen view - from the other side, and shows the massive halls which would have been built alongside the tower.

There were also quite a few plans for a much larger Palace of Westminster, and I gather some of the drawings are stored at the National Archives - as well as in the Parliamentary Archive. I hope to get some copies eventually of those.

Another area which interests me is the crazy, if optimistic visions of the future which were starting to excite urban planners in the 30s-60s. By now we are supposed to be flying to work in out private helicopters and there would be massive motorways driven right through the very center of our cities. The images always showed the motorways as vast empty spaces with just a few cars on them - presumably as we are all flying around in our helicopters.

There was a very serious plan at one time to demolish Covent Garden and turn it into a major road - until it was listed at the very last minute in 1973. However, here is an idea from a student of what the road could have looked like as it came past Trafalgar Square.

You may well shudder in horror at the idea!

Another concept drawing for the reconstruction of the war damaged areas around St Paul’s Cathedral taps into the mania of the time for large tower blocks with lots of space between them. I have to admit, that I am quite a fan of this and feel that the architects of the 60s are unfairly maligned. The buildings didn’t fail as social housing because the concept was flawed, but because the councils which owned them never bothered to maintain them properly, so they became decrepit and run-down leading those who could to leave them, and resulting in them becoming modern slums.

The restorations of places such as Trellick Tower show that the concept was perfectly fine - they just needed looking after.

Anyhow - rant over, and here is a concept for St Pauls

Another one which makes people sit up and gasp when they see it - is the proposed tower to be built on top of the Selfridges department store in London.

(source -  http://www.ngca.co.uk/home/default.asp?id=45)

OK - that was a tad extreme, but the idea for a tower on the building was very serious and I have seen several different designs. I am not totally sure why it was abandoned - probably cost issues. Here is one of the more sensible proposals.

Although the tower was never built, the roof itself did for a while become an open plaza for the general public and had a massive lawn along the frontage. Alas, the tons of soil were not a good idea and the lawn was removed. I still think it would be wonderful to reopen the roof though - maybe with somewhat lighter flagstones or decking instead of the real grass.

Although I said the huge tower wasn’t built - the building did at one time have towers on the roof - as it had two large radio transmitters there for local broadcasts in the early days of radio. You can just about see them here in 1928.

Of course, none of these were ever built - but for a monumental structure which was attempted, look no further than the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea. It rises a staggering 105 stories, and if it had been finished would have been the world’s tallest hotel. Alas, cheap concrete render the structure unusable, and cost cuts mean it was never finished. I really like it though.

Wow!

Taken from a June 1896 issue of the Illustrated London News, this is one of a series of “scenes of London” - this of Ludgate Circus. Notable though is the railway bridge and steam train belonging to the Chatham and South Eastern Railway.

This was replaced with an underground tunnel in 1990 and is now the Thameslink line, with City Thameslink being the the left hand side of the road the bridge is going over.

(this was taken from my growing collection of old London newspapers)

Incidentally, had the Fleet Line of the London Underground been built, it would have had a station at Ludgate Circus.

A fantastic quote from an old journal describes the railway viaduct thus:

Of all the eyesores of modern London, surely the most hideous is the Ludgate Hill Viaduct - that enormous flat iron that lies across the chest of Ludgate Hill like a bar of metal on the breast of a wretch in a torture-chamber.

Let us hope that a time will come when all designs for City improvements will be compelled to endure the scrutiny and win the approval of a committee of taste. The useful and the beautiful must not for ever be divorced.

The railway bridge lies flat across the street, only eighteen feet above the roadway, and is a miracle of clumsy and stubborn ugliness, entirely spoiling the approach to one of the finest buildings in London. The five girders of wrought iron cross the street, here only forty-two feet wide, and the span is sixty feet, in order to allow of future enlargement of the street. Absurd lattice-work, decorative brackets, bronze armorial medallions, and gas lanterns and standards, form a combination that only the unsettled and imitative art of the ruthless nineteenth century could have put together.

Think of what the Egyptians in the times of the Pharaohs did with granite! and observe what we Englishmen of the present day do with iron. Observe this vulgar daubing of brown paint and barbaric gilding, and think of what the Moors did with colour in the courts of the Alhambra!

The stolid hammermen went to work, and the iron nightmare was set up in all its Babylonian hideousness.

Another photo of the same location taken around 1902 can be found here

Woes with the Post Office.

Today I had to make two trips to Royal Mail institutions - one to pay a “fine” of 6p on some postage, along with a £1 handling fee - then off the post office to send a parcel.

After navigating several scary road junctions I made it to the Post Office depot and located the counter where I can collect parcels and pay postage fines, I walked in to a bored looking queue of people waiting to be served. A strong aroma which I am worried may have been urine based permeated the small room and after paying my fine I was able to collect an A4 envelope which had just a small leaflet inside and a first class stamp on the front. Quite why I need to pay an extra 6p for that I just cannot begin to work out.

Whilst I was waiting though, I took time to contemplate the two warning notices informing me that from the 11th April 2005 - I will no longer be able to park my car in the car park. Oh, and I should prepare for the ID-Theft Week 2007, occurring shortly.

Anyhow - off to the post office to dispatch another item sold via eBay and whilst waiting in the (yet another) long queue - I noticed the video screen was wishing me a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. At least it wasn’t quite as out of date as the other Royal Mail venue - but it is possibly symbolic of the timeliness of their service now.

As a side issue though - why are customers required to go all the way to a sorting office to collect parcels, when they could go to the vastly more convenient Post Office instead?

Surely it is not beyond the capabilities of the Royal Mail to send all undelivered mail to the local mail Post Office and let people collect them there. It would be better for customers as the Post Office will have more staff to serve customers quicker (sort of) and also for all their problems - they are at least open sensible hours - unlike the sorting office which still seems to think opening on a Saturday is a privilege we should be grateful for.

Such a move would also drive more people into the Post Office, which tends to be better looked after than the shabby sorting office - and recalling that for the vast majority of people their only experience on the Royal Mail is the sorting office when they have to collect parcels that were delivered “while you were out” (or more likely, while you were sitting by the front door waiting), this has to be good for their brand image.

It just seems very antiquated to me.