Aug 12, 2010 Fancy a week (well, almost) of events about the mysteries that lurk unseen under the streets of London? Sadly, mainly limited to talking about what is down there rather than actually visiting the places, the talks will still be of interest to many Londoners who share my fascination for the hidden underworld.
Although most of the events invite you to tour the subterranean world through the vicarious medium of lectures – there are two tours that will include going below ground.
Organised by Illumini, the talks are free and you can just turn up on the day – although to guarantee a seat, you can send them an email booking tickets if you want. However, for a couple of the tours, booking is required.
To book tickets for any of the tours,walks or talks – send an email to illumini@hotmail.co.uk with your details and which talks/tours you are interested in.
Walks/Tours:
Then there are the talks:
All take place at The Basement Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, London, EC1V 9LT
Friday 10th Sept
Saturday 11th Sept
Sunday 12th Sept
Monday 13th Sept
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brunel museum, ghosts, london underground, post office railway, rotherhithe, sewers, subteranean
Apr 27, 2010 “I apologise for the cramped conditions” was how the first train on the newly extended East London Line was introduced to its excited passengers. For yes, the majority, if not indeed the totality of the passengers were highly excited.
A moderate collection of “sad train geeks”, such as your correspondent, who also spied the pseudonymous editor of London Reconnections at Dalston Junction station and a rather larger collection of TfL suits finally getting to travel on a train line they have been working on for the past few years.
Now in a preview mode with limited offerings, once it gets up to full steam, you can expect the rush hours to be equally cramped as we had today, although I doubt commuters will get an apology over the tannoy from the Managing Director of TfL London Rail, Ian Brown.
Anyhow – after hanging around in the ticket hall, an announcement that the first ELL train was now ready and people passed through ticket barriers with the excitement of children about to meet Father Christmas. Down in the surprisingly spacious platform, people held aloft camera phones, and press people held more substantial cameras, trying to get photos of a new train in a new train station, all the time being serenaded by a musical combo.
To reasure everyone that this was indeed the first train – both ends of the train had a large sign affixed to confirm it is the first passenger train in April 2010.
Technically not the first though, as a driver testing the trains last week opened the doors at a public station and passengers, seeing a train with open doors, blithely chose to get on – only to be evicted at a later point when train staff realised the test train had gained a bit of unexpected baggage.
A short speech over the speakers from the aforementioned boss, and then the train was off to cheers and applause.
As we pulled into stations along the line, people determined to take the first train, if not quite so determined as to get to Dalston Junction joined us – and to add normality to a special train – some people actually got off and hurried away to less frivolous pursuits.
Leaving the shiny new stations, we returned to the older existing line at Whitechapel. Then passing through the Brunel tunnel by train, just as I had passed through it on foot a few weeks ago – and it was a slight disappointment that they didn’t light up the tunnel (as they can) as the inaugural train passed through.
Now into South London, down to New Cross and that was the trip over. A special trip today that will soon become mundane for everyone else.
The speed of the trip from North to South London was surprisingly swift, although possibly more noticeable to me due to a very fraught and time consuming trip to get to Dalston Junction thanks to several problems on the tube and DLR.
Taking the train back, in addition to be considerably less packed as the media and suits departed, the air conditioning in the train was now very noticeable and gratefully received on a warm lunchtime.
A downside that I expect will have people scratching heads in some confusion about the planning decision, as well as rubbing them in pain is that one of the curved bars for standing passengers to hold on to has a curve that is just 6 feet from the floor – leading to a bump for your correspondent when standing under it.
In addition, the “tube maps” on the trains are complete for the full running of the network – something which Diamond Geezer noticed this morning doesn’t apply the station and website maps, yet.
More photos over at my Flickr account as usual.
Will upload more in a day or two – work was rather fraught this afternoon and I only messed around with the key photos.
Official Note from TfL:
The line will open at first under “Preview Running” status which will offer a limited service of eight trains per hour from 7am till 8pm, Monday to Friday from Dalston Junction to New Cross Gate stations. On Sunday 23rd May, a full service will start operating from Dalston Junction to West Croydon.
Other Blog Reports:
Mar 12, 2010 It might sound like a rather obscure sort of event that just a few people would be interested in – yet Londoners have leapt at the chance to walk through the Thames Tunnel at Rotherhithe this weekend.
Tickets for the evening and Saturday visits were sold out almost as soon as they were announced – with the phone line and (decrepit) website suffering under the load of requests. People are now begging for tickets almost as if they are trying to attend a pop-concert.
Thames Tunnel Ticket Touts could make a fortune tonight!
This level of interest in our deep subterranean world shouldn’t really surprise people though – as most of us have a weird fascination with the hidden and mysterious. Even the most disinterested person is going to be mildly curious in seeing what lies beyond the dark voids they occasionally see in the tunnels on their daily commute.
I have a long habit of trying to get into subterranean locations – sometimes with success – and also do a little lobbying on trying to get places opened up where I genuinely think it is possible.
That latter part has been singularly the most disappointing though – as people cry that health and safety is a worry (rarely is) or that no one would be interested (oh, boy are they interested!).
It’s even worse when I don’t even get a reply though – as then I can’t be sure if an idea was evaluated and rejected – or simply thrown in the bin without consideration.
An example of the later would be an email I sent to the DLR last year when the Xmas closure of Bank station was announced. The proposal was simple. It is just about possible to walk onto the Bank line from a side road just before it dips into the tunnel, so why not open the tunnel up to the general public to walk down over the Xmas weekend before the engineering works started?
I just knew that hundreds, if not thousands of people would have leapt at such an opportunity. Not because the tunnel is historic, but because the opportunity is rare, and the walk would be a singularly unusual event to take part in.
No reply – not even a “don’t be stupid, don’t you realise there are a hundred and one reasons why that can’t be done!”
The Thames Tunnel tour will also include a recreation of the Funfair element, but that is a mere sideshow for most people who seem to be going down under the river. It is the tunnel that is the main event here, so other opportunities to open tunnels shouldn’t be reliant on being able to put on a big show. The tunnel is the show!
Maybe the huge demand for tickets to the Thames Tunnel will encourage more openings like this where possible?
I do appreciate the problems in opening subterranean venues though – the organisation, the volunteers needed, the inevitable worries about insurance and crowd control – not to mention ensuring there are no trains using the tunnel at the time!
For that reason, despite people expressing hopes that the Thames Tunnel tour will happen again, I suspect that repeats will be unlikely, simply because you are asking train passengers to lose a fairly important cross-river link. We shouldn’t forget in our desire to visit these places that they have a primary function, and being a tourist attraction isn’t it.
I wont mention details in case plans are being plotted, but I did get a “hmm, interesting” from a suitably connected person at London Underground a year ago for a proposal to open up a bit of abandoned station and a tunnel for a weekend in a way that got around most of the health and safety worries that come from having loads of people in sometimes constrained areas.
Fingers crossed that it happens, and even if it doesn’t, at least I know someone read the email and considered the proposal. That simple act is often worth the effort, even if nothing comes of it in the end.
Mar 4, 2010 Warning – tickets are SOLD OUT. You can try turning up in the hope that people have spares, but that is about it. The Brunel Museum will however resume their floodlit tunnel train trips in a few months time.
In the meantime, here is my report of my visit to the tunnels.
On the weekend of the 12th-13th March, the world’s first underwater tunnel – at Rotherhithe – will be open to the general public.
Neither the Brunel Museum nor the LT Museum websites have any details – but phone the LT Museum on 020 7565 7298 and grab some tickets.
As it happens, I knew there were plans to do something prior to the line being reopened for trains, but I thought they had been cancelled.
The Brunel Museum used to take a slow tube train through the tunnels with the tunnel lights switched on to show off the structure, but this is presumed to be a walking tour through the tunnels before it is handed over to live trains again.
Woo!
Update: The LT Museum website now has details – and it is indeed a guided walking tour from one end to the other, and back again. Self-evidently, the start/stop point will be the Rotherhithe side as that is where the museum is sited – along with the soon to be refurbished shaft area.
Note – Like turning up to a nightclub wearing trainers, there is a dress code and trainers are not permitted. You need to have sturdy shoes for the tour.
Jun 28, 2009 As much as a admire the Victorians for many achievements, they did have two rather annoying habits. One was to rewrite, or at least censor ancient history when they discovered the supposedly enlightened folk were rather keen on Bacchanalian propensities. Equally, while old traditions were carried out, only if they were by good upstanding persons, if the rude masses should try to hold a fair or party, such things would be frowned upon if not outright banned.
One such victim of the Victorian prudishness was a long standing Horn Fair held at Charlton – which was suppressed in 1874 due to the drunken antics therein. The fair was resurrected in 1973 but is a much more sedate (aka, family friendly) affair now.
In the 1820s’ Daniel Defoe wrote of the fair: The mob indeed at that time take all kinds of liberties, and the women are especially impudent for that day; as if it was a day that justify’d the giving themselves a loose to all manner of indecency and immodesty, without any reproach, or without suffering the censure which such behaviour would deserve at another time.
Ouch!
The Horn Fair has a somewhat dubious, if licentious history.
Peter Cunningham, in his Handbook of London, thus gives his version of the story:
“King John, wearied with hunting on Shooter’s Hill and Blackheath, entered the house of a miller at Charlton to refresh and rest himself. He found no one at home but the miller’s wife, young, it is said, and beautiful. The miller, it so happened, was earlier in coming home than was usual when he went to Greenwich with his meal; and red and raging at what he saw on his return, he drew his knife. The king being unarmed, thought it prudent to make himself known, and the miller, only too happy to think it was no baser individual, asked a boon of the king. The king consented, and the miller was told to clear his eyes, and claim the long strip of land he could see before him on the Charlton side of the river Thames. The miller cleared his eyes, and saw as far as the point near Rotherhithe. The king then admitted the distance, and the miller was put into possession of the property on one condition – that he should walk annually on that day, the 18th of October, to the farthest bounds of the estate with a pair of buck’s horns upon his head.”
Although it was a common tradition that the husband of an unfaithful wife should wear horns on his head as a mark of shame, I have some difficulty with the tale, as the idea that a King would grant a mere miller a swathe of land as vast as claimed for just one shag. Also if such a single (and hence incredibly rich) landowner actually did exist, then it would be recorded, and no such records exist.
Equally, the fair used to be held around mid-summer and was only moved to October around the 17th Century.
Despite saying that – there could just possibly be a related bit of history which could explain how such a legend arose.
When the famous Magna Carta was issued to King John, as part of the subsequent editing process, a lesser known Magna Charta de Foresta also emerged a couple of years later. This secondary document relaxed a large number of laws which made it almost a capital offence to hunt in the forests, which were solely the preserve of the Monarch. The forests and lands belonging to the Monarch had been greatly expanded, causing considerable anger among the populace, so the law also reduced the size of the land controlled by the Monarch, making it available for common folk to use.
It seems to me that the tale about King John granting land to a commoner is related in style to the actual law that his son signed just a few years later – which had a not dissimilar effect.
When the law was signed by King Henry III, there was considerable rejoicing – and it is possible that the Charlton Horn Fair owes its origins to those celebrations. There ware various other Horn Fairs dotted around the country, and a good many of them all seem to date from charters granted during King Henry III’s reign, and certainly the Charlton Horn Fair can be traced back that far as well, although its exact origins are uncertain.
The Horn aspect has been linked by some commentators to earlier pagan traditions, but another aspect of the Magna Charta de Foresta was to reduce the fines on hunting and encourage the reduction of earlier New Forests. The link between the law and hunting could explain the popularity of wearing horns, to show that the commoner has been allowed to hunt freely.
No one is really sure, and I am speculating about the link with King Henry’s laws – although I do rather like my idea 
The Charlton fair seemed to reach its zenith in popularity during the Restoration period, and flotillas of boats would fill the Thames as they brought revellers down from London to Charlton – often in fancy dress or cross-dressing and wearing horns. William Fuller wrote in 1703: “I remember being there upon Horn Fair day, I was dressed in my landlady’s best gown and other women’s attire, and to Horn Fair we went, and as we were coming back by water, all the clothes were spoilt by dirty water etc. that was flung on us in an inundation, for which I was obliged to present her with two guineas to make atonement for the damage sustained.”
Cross-dressing seemed to be a very important part of the festivities.
While the fair itself was restored in the 1970s, the parade from Cuckold’s Point in Rotherhithe has remained notably missing – until today that is.
This morning, the procession from Cuckold’s Point to Charlton was resurrected – and I went along to watch.
The procession started fortuitously close to where I live, albeit on the other side of the river and after starting roughly where Cuckold’s Point would have been, progressed largely along the riverside blowing horns and banging drums.
Locals came out to watch this madcap gang of men in drag and a lady wearing horns pushing along a decorated wheel while a few photographers, myself included ran around the place trying to take photos.
Some passers by joined in the fun – and some did not.
They took a detour in the Surrey Docks city farm, which is directly opposite my flat (I can usually hear the cows), and I took a slight detour away to get a good vantage point by a tiny, if rather pretty alleyway known as Randall’s Rents (The Greenwich Phantom should have a look!). This is a row of former workers houses for people working in the local docks and is thought to be one of the oldest parts of Rotherhithe still standing.
Then round the docks and eventually about an hour later they stopped at the Dog and Bull for lunch, where I left them. Today there about 20 people in the procession – and maybe one day it will grow in size to match the earlier times when hundreds of people would progress to Charlton.
Being more than a little off-colour over the weekend, and exhausted from trotting around on a hot morning, I didn’t pick up the procession when it restarted or go over to Charlton, although I gather a local blogger was there today.
My full photo collection – as usual over at Flickr.
Two other recently resurected traditions that those charming Victorians frowned upon are the Jack in the Green and Easter Chair Heaving.
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