A Night at the Museum

Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman

Covent Garden Piazza is always a lively and dynamic part of London with a permanent throng of natives and visitors drawn to the spectacle of street entertainers, the wonderfully restored produce market and the glitz of the Royal Opera House, all under the imperturbable gaze of Inigo Jones St. Paul's Church, commonly known as the Actors' Church. For all around you is the Theatre land of London from Richard D'Oyly Carte’s Savoy Theatre with a small hotel attached to the Lyceum, The Strand , The Garrick and the Adelphi to name a few. Tonight I was going to a performance which would bring together three of my favourite things; London’s Underground which is the lifeblood of the City, The Transport Museum which gives a fascinating insight into the growth of London and the unique and indomitable figure of the Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman, who died in 1984 but who is still remembered with great affection, having championed Victorian Architecture and Railways but not in a tedious way but as in his poetry and writing with an impish wit which belied the depths of his undoubted insight. Oh, and there is the slight complicating factor that I actually live and commute in Metroland in a part which is still rural!


Entrance to the Museum

John Betjeman described himself as a "poet and a hack", a sentiment typical of the wry self-deprecating wit that has earned him an indelible place in the affections of the British public. By his death in 1984, he was probably the 20th century's most popular Poet Laureate.

Born in 1906, Betjeman grew up in the suburbs of north London. At school his German name marked him out for the attention of bullies. He arrived at Oxford University with a teddy bear which gave his contemporary Evelyn Waugh the idea for Aloysius, Sebastian's teddy, in Brideshead Revisited. Betjeman was more concerned with his social life and writing for university magazines than his academic studies and failed to complete his degree.





Betjeman spent the Second World War working for the Ministry of Information and as a cultural attaché in Ireland (but by all accounts as a spy), where the IRA considered his assassination but decided against it as "a man who could give so much pleasure with his pen couldn't be much of a secret agent". Work for the Architectural Review fuelled a lifelong passion for unloved Victorian buildings, which Betjeman campaigned tirelessly to save, in later life becoming known as much for his architectural programmes; recognisable by his large waist and avuncular style. A statue of Betjeman stands at London's St Pancras station, which he fought to save. He developed an affection for the Irish people and the country which is reflected in his poetry;

“Stony seaboard, far and foreign,
Stony hills poured over space,
Stony outcrop of the Burren,
Stones in every fertile place,
Little fields with boulders dotted,
Grey-stone shoulders saffron-spotted,
Stone-walled cabins thatched with reeds,
Where a Stone Age people breeds
The last of Europe's Stone Age race,"

IRELAND WITH EMILY

Betjeman campaigned strongly against the architectural vandalism of the 1960’s where disastrous architectural, town planning and transport mistakes were made, none more so than the destruction of the Euston Arch. Its demolition, with the rest of Euston Station was regarded as one of the greatest acts of Post-War architectural vandalism in Britain, the campaign to save it lead to the foundation of the Victorian Society and involved the indomitable Sir John Betjeman.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/09/euston-arch.html

Whilst that battle was lost up the road the campaign to save St. Pancras Station was a turning point. The greatest threat to the station came in 1966 with plans to amalgamate King's Cross and St Pancras. However public opinion had been sharpened by the appalling demolition of Euston in 1962. John Betjeman took up the cause to protect the station and in 1967 the Government listed the station and hotel as Grade 1.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/st-pancras-reborn.html




Tonight we are going to a presentation in my favourite London Museum, The Transport Museum at Covent Garden (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/londons-transport-museum.html ) on Betjeman and Metro-Land co hosted by the Museum and the Betjeman Society in the Cubic Theatre under the Museum whose construction was somewhat delayed when they discovered a Saxon graveyard during the excavations. These are the perils of digging in this ancient city!


Map of Metroland

The talk is part of the Museum’s Suburbia exhibition and season which explores how public transport helped to create the myths and identity of suburbia and how it has featured in the cultural fabric of London and Britain over the last 100 years. The exhibition looks at how transport has shaped the suburbs and celebrates suburban lifestyle, architecture, design and popular culture through a series of unique displays. Mixing fun, fact and a little bit of fantasy to rejoice in a place that we collectively continue to love and hate.




Metroland Magazine for the 1924 Empire Exhibition at Wembley

The talk on Betjeman and Metro-land was co-hosted by David Bownes, Head Curator of the London Transport Museum John Heald, Vice-Chairman of the Betjeman Society. It was trailed as an exploration of the suburban ideal, through the words of Britain's best loved poet, including rare archival footage, poetry readings and vintage promotional material celebrating Betjeman's beloved Metro-land.



Of all the works of Sir John Betjeman none has caught the public imagination more than Metro-Land, the BBC documentary which he made in 1973. It was Sir John's gift to romanticise the mundane: in this case a tube ride from Baker Street to Amersham, celebrating the north-west London suburbs created by the Metropolitan Railway between 1910 and 1933.


Metroland DVD

"Metro-Land" was the advertising slogan developed to entice workers from cramped homes in Central London out into the rural paradise of Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. It was invented in 1915 by the Metropolitan Railway's in-house copywriter James Garland, who according to legend was ill with influenza and sprang out of bed when he thought of the term. In the company's advertising material, Metro-Land was certainly not a place where you were expected to go down with flu: posters and a magazine which carried the name Metro-Land depicted a sylvan landscape where ladies in hats picked flowers and drifted through sun-speckled meadows.


Baker Street


Harrow on the Hill

It was, of course, largely a con. The creation of Metro-Land destroyed the very thing - open countryside - which was used to advertise it. The speculative homes thrown up around the new stations bore few resemblances to the Tudor cottages depicted in the advertising materials: most were dreary semis, constructed at great haste and sold for as little as £400 each. Modern first-time buyers can only dream: that is equivalent to just £20,000 in today's money.



No developer would be allowed such free rein today. Indeed, the suburban sprawl created by the Metropolitan Railway did much to influence the creation of the post-war town and country planning system. A dozen years after the railway was subsumed into the newly-formed London Transport in 1933, the growth of Metro-Land was finally halted by the instigation of London's green belt.

See; http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/01/northern-heights.html

Metro-land may have lost its official standing only eighteen years after its invention, but the name had already entered the language as an almost generic expression of suburban life. A popular song called My Little Metro-land Home had been published in 1920. The word had even, through Evelyn Waugh's fictional character Margot Metro-land, appeared for the first time in the pages of a novel (Decline and Fall, published in 1928). Metro-land's characteristics were later to be affectionately evoked in the poems of John Betjeman such as The Metropolitan Railway (1954) and in his nostalgic BBC television programme Metro-land, made in 1973. Yet another perspective appears in Julian Barnes' first novel, Metroland (1980) where the writer draws on memories of his own suburban upbringing in the area in the 1960s. For Barnes 'Metro-land is a country with elastic borders which every visitor can draw for himself, as Stevenson drew his map of Treasure Island'.



In little more than half a century, Metro-land grew from being an ad man's creative invention into a more prosaic reality in the 1920s and 30s, a wistful post-war recollection from the 1950s onwards and finally a new land of personal imagination by 1980.

Metroland

The Song!


The houses

David Bownes and John Heald explored Betjeman’s fascination with Metro-Land with authority and affection and it is indicative of the respect with which Betjeman is held to this day, 25 years after his death, that there was not a spare seat in the Cubic Theatre. John Heald recited from Betjeman’s works with charm and affection at times looking and sounding uncannily like his hero. He also made a pitch for people to join the Society as it is “great fun” and indeed watching rare archive footage of Betjeman none present doubted the statement.

As for the late, great and much loved Poet Laureate, Sir John Betjeman, he loved wild Cornwall and was buried there; he loved suburban Harrow. The two come together in his poem "Harrow-on-the-Hill", when dusk over the Metropolitan Line makes suburbs look like Cornish seas:

"There's a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton, / There's a line of harbour lights at Perivale."

For the story of the world’s first Underground Railway and a Great Railway Journey see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html


Live in Metroland - The door catches on Metropolitan Railway carriages

Der Untergrund

Click on map for a larger view

Die Linien, Bahnhöfe und Zonen von London Underground, London Overground und Docklands Light Railway (DLR).

Als Klassiker des Designs macht die U-Bahn-Karte das Fahren im Londoner U-Bahn-Netz denkbar einfach. Diese übersichtliche Karte enthält einen Schlüssel zu allen eingezeichneten Stationen sowie die 6 Gebührenzonen.

CLICK ON MAP TO ENLARGE

London's Transport Museum

It is always good when you meet an old friend again and after a two year closure for refurbishment my favourite museum, London’s Transport Museum housed in the listed Floral Hall in London’s lively Covent Garden, has reawakened from its long slumber looking even more attractive than ever.

The first section of the London Underground opened from Paddington to Farringdon on 10 January 1863. A second underground line, the District, began operating five years later. The two were eventually linked to create the Circle line in 1884. The early underground was a huge engineering achievement and very well used, but had one big disadvantage. Its steam locomotives created a permanent sulphurous fug in the stations and tunnels! For the full story see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/great-circle-line-journey.html

The modern story of Covent Garden began in the 1630s when land formerly belonging to Westminster Abbey, 'the Convent Garden' was redeveloped by the 4th Earl of Bedford. Today overlooked by the Royal Opera House the former vegetable & produce market has been restored to a thriving urban hub with numerous shops and street theatre, particularly on the Piazza in front of Inigo Jone’s St. Paul’s Church at the western end. At the other end of the piazza you come to London’s Transport Museum.



This museum is child friendly with the opportunity to “drive” a tube train and speak to the “tunnelers”. It tells the story of how the Tube, trams and Buses made the world’s first mega-city possible – it is a refreshing antidote to the hideously overpriced theme park type attractions which set out to entrap visitors to London. It is £8.00 for a full adult tickets but under 16’s get in free making this a good value family trip to the Museum, The Museum Shop and the Upper Deck Cafe Bar nattily upholstered in the same distinctive moquette fabric used in the buses and trains in London.

The new Museum reopened on 22 November 2007 after a two year, £22 million refurbishment and redesign project. It tells the story of the development of London, the first modern “mega-city”, its transport systems and the people who travelled and worked on them over the last 200 years. As well as exploring the past, the new Museum also looks at future transport developments and how transport has shaped five other world cities - Delhi, New York, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo.


London Transport Museum's collection originated in the 1920s, when the London General Omnibus Company decided to preserve two Victorian horse buses and an early motorbus for future generations. The Museum of British Transport opened in an old bus garage in Clapham, south London, during the 1960s, before moving to Syon Park in west London in 1973 as the London Transport Collection. In 1980, the public displays moved again, this time to occupy the Flower Market building in Covent Garden as the London Transport Museum. The building that now houses London Transport Museum was designed as the dedicated Flower Market by William Rogers in 1871. For the next hundred years, this was the heart of London's wholesale flower business, famously trading every day except Christmas. The cast iron and glass architecture has an appropriate feel for a transport museum, being similar to a Victorian railway station. The major refurbishment has respected and rejuvenated the listed historic structure.



The museum’s approach to visual identity echoes that taken by Frank Pick in the early 20th century. This was a wonderful period in British Design where the talents of many exiles from Germany and experimental British designers were utilised by companies such as Shell, The Post Office and most notably London Transport. As Chief Executive of London Transport, Pick employed cutting-edge contemporary designers and allowed them to bring the London Transport brand to life with playful and persuasive creativity. Frank Pick’s strategy worked and led to the implementation of one of earliest examples of a clear and consistent corporate design policy that has survived for over a century and still inspires us today.


The Underground roundel is still one of the world’s most recognised brands and the famous schematic map of the London Underground designed by Harry Beck in 1933 has become the template for transport maps worldwide. Beck was an Underground employee who realised that, because the railway ran mostly underground, the physical locations of the stations weren’t relevant to the traveller wanting to know how to get to one station from another — only the topology of the railway mattered. Indeed the design has become so widely known that it is now instantly recognisable as representing London. It has been featured on T-shirts, postcards, and other memorabilia. In 2006 the design came second in a televised search for the most well known British Design Icon. It widely cited by academics and designers as a 'design classic' and it is due to these cultural associations that London Underground does not usually permit the design to be used or altered for any other purpose. Indeed such was the Underground’s obsession with customer centred design they developed their own “machine typeface” – New Johnston, to make their literature, maps and signage clearer.

It is appropriate then that the entrance to the reopened museum is a ramp featuring metro maps from around the world demonstrating that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Video screens embedded inside these maps contain (from Facebook and Flickr) videos of metro systems worldwide shot by users from these countries. At the end you take a lift to the top floor and a journey back in time. In the lift a one-line electronic display of dates comes to rest at 1800 and horses neigh over the sound system as you disembark onto a floor devoted to the transport of that era: including the 1829 omnibus and the horse-drawn tram. You then travel down through the Museum and the ages to the present. New galleries feature original artworks and advertising posters, and explore the extraordinary design heritage of London’s transport system, as well as London transport at war and the expansion of the capital through the development of the London Underground. This is a clever thematic treatment which works well for all ages – the entrance ramp creates visual anticipation and this is maintained throughout the visit by glimpses of the displays on the lower floors which include trains, trams, trolleys and buses from all eras. What is it about these which brings out the kid in all ages?



Actors mingle with the visitors, playing roles such as the capital’s first female bus driver. Among the gleaming metal vehicles there are smaller displays featuring poignant personal stories of some of London’s transport workers, like that of John Cunningham, a bus-station worker who bravely stood on the roof of his depot during the Blitz to sound the bomb alarm only to be blown to pieces in a direct hit. The revamped museum contains a third more exhibits than before, including a regularly changing collection of Underground posters, a whole new floor and an underground 120 seat theatre which resulted which resulted in the discovery during building work of 7th century skeletons in the basement, the legacy of a Saxon trading site.

The new museum is brighter than before and allows the atmospheric architecture of the Floral Hall to shine through. It also sets the standard in terms of step free access, disabled toilets and easy circulation throughout for mobility impaired visitors. A pity therefore that these credentials are not reinforced by high visibility tactile signage and clear offers of assistance at entrance points. The public toilet layout is strange as you pass by 5 identical doors before realising the last one leads to the ladies and gents. As these are separate the circulation is wasteful, far better to have adopted the continental unisex layout where they both lead onto a common entrance and washing area. Inside the best which can be said is they reflect the ambience of their counterparts on Underground stations – they are a lost opportunity. The signage to the toilets doesn’t impress and the directional signage in the museum is not too obvious either – no doubt these are teething issues on reopening which will be addressed.



At the end of the tour you exit into a stylish contemporary shop selling an excellent range of designer gifts, books, toys and even furniture upholstered in London Transport moquette – definitely antiques of the future! Upstairs there is the “Collectors Corner” for the hairy’s which has a wonderful stock of the famous Underground posters as well as books, DVD’s, models and memorabilia, many of which won’t be found elsewhere. The best buy is the beautifully produced Souvenir Guide at £5.00 which charts many aspects of London’s transport and its design icons. The only criticism is a publication of this quality should have an index. Also on this level you will find the Upper Deck Cafe and Bar. Run by Searcy’s, who also do catering at the Royal Opera and Buckingham Palace garden parties, this does rather tasty snacks, soups and meals and you could do far worse for a refuelling stop in this area. In the evening the ambience is softer and it turns into an attractive bar, a have from the hustle and bustle outside.

The refurbished museum hits all the right buttons providing a fascinating and interactive attraction for the kids and a fascinating insight into how transport solutions responded to and made possible the phenomenon which is the great world City of London. As Sam Mullins the Director observes in his introduction to the guide: “Transport is what drives cities worldwide. As London grew to be a world city, its citizens moved from walking to using a complex mix of transport modes: rail, taxi, bus, boat, tram, cycle.”

The story of the development of London and its transport system’s is a fascinating tale. Here, at London’s Transport Museum, it is a story well told to be enjoyed by the enthusiast and casual visitor alike. It is good to see this fascinating Transport Museum which tells the story of London so eloquently returned to service.


The Transport Museum in Covent Garden Piazza

A Day in London.

London Eye

“No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." Since Dr Samuel Johnson uttered these words to James Boswell in 1777 opinions have differed on whether being tired of London is just that for obviously there is plenty of life elsewhere.

What is evident is a first time visitor can become very tired of London in just one day so here is a suggested RLT (Reduced London Tour) which will keep you away from tired, tacky and amazingly expensive tourist traps, will cover a great deal of ground and give you a real insight into the long history and dynamic present of a great world city. So let’s start our day long RLT!





Whether you are already in central London or coming into its many stations your first stop is the British Museum on Great Russell Street. This is close to Holborn Underground Station (Central & Piccadilly Lines) and Russell Square (Piccadilly Line) but I suggest also take a London Taxi for the short trip to take in London at street level but make sure you have your Oyster Card which will be the cheapest way to cover the extensive ground and transport modes on your RLT.

09.30 British Museum

The Museum celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2003 and as you approach it you will notice its great portico. This is based on the portico of the Bank of Ireland (Originally the Houses of Parliament) in Dublin. The architect’s Robert Smirke’s father (Robert Smirke, The Elder) was an illustrator who painted in people on prints and had worked on prints of the Dublin building.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/10/irish-parliament-building.html




British Museum Portico

The origins of the British Museum lie in the will of the physician, naturalist and collector, Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753). Sloane wanted his collection of more than 71,000 objects, library and herbarium to be preserved intact after his death. He bequeathed it to King George II for the nation in return for payment of £20,000 to his heirs. Today your entrance is free, which is an attractive price.


British Museum

Stride boldly into the front entrance and keep going and before you know it you will emerge into a space of wonder; The Great Court and Reading Room. Designed by Norman Foster Partners to cover what was a hidden courtyard the lightness and elegance of the parabolic glass roof design is a spectacle. At the centre is the Reading Room where Karl Marx and many others studied and researched. This has been wonderfully restored and is a confident Victorian building constructed with cast iron ribs and with an interesting exhibition on its “ticket holders” who cover the great and good of science & literature.


British Museum Great Court


Reading Room

Off to your left of the Great Court follow the signs to the Egyptian Room to view an almost overpowering collection of sarcophagi and mummies from the Egyptian dynasties. First on the way in stop at the Rosetta Stone, a stellae proclaiming the good works and divinity of the Pharaoh Ptolemy VI Ephiphanieas written in hieroglyph, demotic and Greek which was the key to deciphering the language of ancient Egypt and understanding its great civilisation.


Parthenon Friezes Gallery

After this follow the signs to the front of the building to view the marbles from the Parthenon of Athens. These realistic carvings attributed to Periciles and they depict the triumphal procession of the Athenians and offerings to their god, Athena in thanks for victory. The Elgin Collection in fact contains other artefacts from the Acropolis and is displayed in a special gallery. The arrival of this collection in London in 1816 was controversial at the time with Lord Byron condemning it being taken from Greece in “Childe Harold” and John Keats praising it in an ode. This debate has been reinforced by revelations of botched cleaning in the 30’s. It should be remembered however that in the museum they can be viewed in the context of the works of other civilisations and greatest damage to the Acropolis of Athens was caused by the conversion of the Parthenon to a Christian church in 450 A.D., the explosion in 1687 when the Parthenon was ruined and the botched restoration of 1923. You could spend a week here and not see all the collections, with your appetite teased head out, across Museum Street towards Covent Garden as you can’t waste time on your RLT!

11.00 walk down to Covent Garden by Endell St. and 7 Dials.



The modern story of Covent Garden began in the 1630s when land formerly belonging to Westminster Abbey, 'the Convent Garden' was redeveloped by the 4th Earl of Bedford. Today overlooked by the Royal Opera House the former vegetable & produce market has been restored to a thriving urban hub with numerous shops and street theatre, particularly on the Piazza in front of Inigo Jone’s St. Paul’s Church at the western end. At the other end of the piazza you come to the London Transport Museum.

11.30 Transport Museum, Covent Garden Piazza.

The first section of the London Underground opened from Paddington to Farringdon on 10 January 1863. A second underground line, the District, began operating five years later. The two were eventually linked to create the Circle line in 1884. The early underground was a huge engineering achievement and very well used, but had one big disadvantage. Its steam locomotives created a permanent sulphurous fug in the stations and tunnels.



This museum is child friendly with the opportunity to “drive” a tube train and speak to the “tunnelers”. It tells the story of how the Tube, trams and Buses made the world’s first mega-city possible (Reduction on your entrance with your Oyster Card). It also has a good shop and café but ignore the latter for the RLT is heading to its lunch time pit stop for refuelling.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/11/londons-transport-museum.html

Walk back towards St. Paul’s, continue down Henrietta Street and pedestrianised New Row until you come to one of London’s great squares, Trafalgar Square. Turn left and go to the fine church with the attractive steeple, St Martin’s in the Fields.

13.00 Lunch, crypt St Martin’s in the Fields, Trafalgar Square

This handsome church designed by James Gibbs, and consecrated in 1726 has a famous musical tradition and a tradition of reaching out to the underprivileged. It has served as a design template for many churches elsewhere including St. George’s in Dublin and numerous churches in the Americas. It is well worth seeing the interior and there is a market to the side. Downstairs you will find the excellent Café in the Crypt where you can have lunch, relax and soak in the atmosphere.


St Martin’s in the Fields




14.00 No 11 bus from Trafalgar Sq. To City via Strand, Fleet Street & St. Paul’s.

Refreshed take this bus towards the City of London from the side of St. Martin’s. This bus goes the length of London from the City to Fulham and is the best “free tour” covering many of the sites including Parliament Square, remember to use your Oyster Card! In this direction you will head down the Strand (originally the edge of the Thames) and on the right you will see the Savoy Hotel and Theatre and ahead of you the you will see the Church of St Clement Danes, the only church outside the City of London rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren and adopted as its church by the RAF after being destroyed in the blitz of 1941. On the right is Somerset House, former home of the British Admiralty and a huge renaissance palazzo on the Thames designed by William Chambers, home to the Courtauld Art Collection and much more.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/eltham-palace.html



The pillar topped by a Griffin marks the boundary of the City of London and soon up Ludgate Hill the impressive sight of Wren’s masterpiece, St. Paul’s Cathedral comes into sight. The first stones of the new Church were laid on 17th December, 1672, by the Lord Mayor of London. Continue past St Paul’s (keep it for another day) and alight at Cannon Street station. Look back towards St Paul’s and you’ll realise the truth of Wren’s epitaph “If you seek his monument, look around you”. Go up Walbrook (originally a stream by the city walls, it still flows underneath) and you come to St Stephen Walbrook. Go inside to see the best (and only symmetrical) Wren church interior. There are 37 Wren churches of the 49 he built still extant and a number are a short walk from here including St Mary Abchurch and St Botolph’s. There is also London’s oldest synagogue, Bevis Marks, which is built in the same style and presumed to be by Wren or one of his pupils.


St Stephen Walbrook

At the top of Walbrook turn left and in the front of a 60’s office block you will find the Temple of Mithras. This is a Roman temple dating from the 3rd Century, The cult of Mithras was a Persian cult with adherents in the Roman Army who were attracted to it being an all male cult. It has many similarities with the later Christian worship including redemption through a blood sacrifice and its temples were the model for the Christian basilicas.


Temple of Mithras

Across the road the modern building on the Apex is No. 1 Poultry designed by James Stirling. In front of you at the apex of this building is the Mansion House and the Bank of England, “The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street”. Walk down King William Street to Monument and ahead of you behind the underground station is the Monument built to commemorate the Great Fire which devastated the City of London in 1666. Standing 202 feet high, the Monument is the tallest isolated stone column in the world. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke and constructed of Portland stone in 1671-7, the simple Doric column is topped by a flaming urn of copper symbolising the Great Fire. Climb the spiral staircase of 311 steps to the balcony at the top and you are rewarded with breathtaking views over the city in all directions, as well as a certificate of achievement.


Monument to Great Fire

15.00 Docklands Light Railway (DLR) - Bank to Island Gardens via Canary Wharf. Go into Monument Station (which is joined to Bank) and find the DLR and get into the front seats and you will enjoy “driving” these driverless trains through the tunnel before you emerge for a tour of London’s Docklands taking in the impressive new financial district of Canary Wharf and alighting at the station before Greenwich, Island Gardens.


Docklands Railway

Go into the park across from the station because now you are going to walk under the River Thames to Greenwich under the Thames through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel!

The riverside at Island Gardens gives a splendid view of Maritime Greenwich and in front of you (go to the left of the tunnel entrance)the Royal Naval College is across the river framing Inigo Jones Queens House. Begun for Charles II by architect John Webb, it was completed by Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor and John Vanburgh as the Royal Hospital charity, founded by William and Mary in 1694 to care for disabled and veteran sailors and behind it on the hill is Greenwich Observatory and Park. This vista and these buildings form a UNESCO World Heritage site which can only be properly seen from this view point.


Royal Naval College, Greenwich

Designed by Sir Alexander Binnie, the Greenwich Foot Tunnel opened in August 1902 so that south London residents could go to work in the docks on the Isle of Dogs and is my favourite price, free! So take the atmospheric lift and walk under the river and emerge at Greenwich to briefly enjoy Greenwich waterfront & Cutty Sark clipper ship –which is being restored before going down to Greenwich Pier.


Greenwich Tunnel

16.20 boat from Greenwich (City Cruises) to Waterloo Pier.

Remember you get a third off the fare with your Oyster card as they don’t go out of their way to tell you. Enjoy London the way it should be seen from the river as you go past Canary Wharf, Tower Bridge, Tower of London and head up past St. Paul’s and the Tate Modern to Westminster alighting at Waterloo Pier.

18.30 London Eye
The London Eye is the world's tallest observation wheel at 135m high. Located on the banks of the River Thames it offers unrivalled views over London. It is a dramatic work of sculpture in its own right by Bayfield and Marks, Architects, is like a bicycle wheel supported on one side as it dramatically hangs over the River Thames. Book tickets online beforehand and collect them in the automatic machines when you arrive.






19.00 On foot across Westminster Bridge taking in the famous vista which the poet Wordsworth immortalised.

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPT. 3, 1802

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Past the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, up Toothill Street and turn right at 55 Broadway (London Underground’s headquarters above St. James Park Station adorned with sculptures by Moore, Epstein, Gill and others)thru Queen Anne’s Gate to St James Park.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/04/give-my-regards-to-55-broadway.html

View Buckingham & St James Palaces, Horseguard’s Parade and Churchill’s War Bunker. Up the Carlton Steps to Piccadilly, onto Leicester Square and to Chinatown which is in a block off Shaftsbury Avenue bounded by Lisle Street and Gerrard Street.

20.00 Chinese Meal in Chinatown and afterwards home for a well earned rest. The restaurant I’d recommend for cheap eats and atmosphere here is Wong Kei in Wardour Street. Spread over 4 floors it has over 600 hundred seats and plenty of authentic Chinese atmosphere (cash only, no cards or cheques). For authentic Cantonese food order the noodle or rice dishes from the back of the menu, Fried Quaedu, Beef Ho Fun, Singapore Noodle, Soup Noodle, Foo Yung Fried Rice etc; These and a bowl of soup and free Chinese tea will be under five pounds but you may well feel hungry two days later!

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/02/kung-hei-fat-choi-happy-chinese-new.html




Chinatown

Congratulations! You have now completed the RLT successfully. More importantly you have seen some wonderful panoramas and sights and got wonderful value out of London’s great public transport system whilst avoiding tacky overpriced (mostly you have paid FREE!) tourist sites and restaurants all the time drinking deeply of this unique city’s sight and sounds. Keep London real, do the Reduced London Tour!






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