Tube Heritage

St John's Wood Station - The signs say "Bakerloo Line" because originally it was on the Stanmore Branch of the Bakerloo Line which joined the other branch at Baker Street.


St John's Wood escalators 1939


Arnos Grove Station

Sixteen Tube stations were today granted Grade II listed status to protect their architectural heritage. The stations include Oxford Circus, Covent Garden, Aldwych and St John's Wood. The grading will protect station facades, including 100-year-old ornate tiling and brickwork, but allow internal changes for safety measures. Simon Thurley, English Heritage chief executive, said: "They are as valuable to London's architectural story as many more famous buildings like the Houses of Parliament."




Sudbury Town station

The stations include several designed by Leslie Green and have historic and architectural significance, illustrating the development of the capital's transport system as well as pioneering the use of a strong image which is recognised around the world.




Cockfosters Station

The stations given Grade II status are:

• Aldwych
• Belsize Park
• Brent Cross
• Caledonian Road


Caledonian Road

• Chalk Farm
• Chesham
• Covent Garden
• Hendon Central
• Oxford Circus (originally two separate stations on the north-west corner of Argyll Street and Oxford Street, and the north-east corner of Argyll Street and Oxford Street including the office above)


• Perivale
• Redbridge
• Russell Square
• St John's Wood
• West Acton
• Wood Green

Three other stations have had their listing upgraded from Grade II to Grade II*. They are:

• Arnos Grove
• Oakwood
• Sudbury Town

The listed stations include several of the tube stations designed by Leslie Green whose ‘ox-blood’ red tile facades, pioneered the use of a strong and consistent corporate image that’s recognised around the world. All the stations have historic and architectural significance, illustrating the development of the capital’s Underground system.


Arnos Grove ticket hall with Passimeter


Escalators with bronze uplighters

The Directors of London Underground in the 20s and 30s saw good design as good for business. By the example it set under Frank Pick the Underground was gradually able to change the public’s attitude to railway stations which had been seen as shabby and inhospitable places. Sir Nicholas Pevsner wrote that Pick saw in every detail a “visual propaganda” and he used this not only to improve the Underground but the environment as a whole. Charles Holden brought the Underground station to the forefront of modern architecture: This achievement is unequalled by any other transport company before or since.

As the Guardian Newspaper's Architectural correspondent (and former London Transport management trainee) Jonathan Glancey observed;

“The first of Charles Holden's tube stations for Frank Pick was Sudbury Town, on the Piccadilly line, opened in 1931. There had been nothing like this distinctly modern yet well-crafted building in Britain before. With typical modesty, Holden, a retiring, teetotal, vegetarian Quaker draper's son from Bolton, Lancashire, chose to describe his first modern masterpiece as "a brick box with a concrete lid. Possibly, just possibly, Holden meant something more.



I can't help thinking that this truly great and still under-rated English architect was thinking of Inigo Jones (1573-1652), who had instigated a revolution in British architecture in the reign of James I when he designed the country's first truly classical buildings. When his client Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, asked Jones to add a chapel "as cheap as a barn" to his smart residential development built around the new Covent Garden piazza, the architect replied "then you shall have the handsomest barn in England". Sudbury Town station is surely transport design's equivalent of St Paul's, Covent Garden.”


Covent Garden Station 1907

“Tube stations are great examples of the capital’s hidden heritage,” said Heritage Minister John Penrose. “Although listing does not mean these stations will remain unchanged for all time, it does mean that any redevelopment plans will have to take the sites’ heritage value into account, which seems entirely right and will ensure the best of design is preserved for the future.”


55, Broadway - London Underground's iconic HQ built in 1929 in the "airspace" above St. James's Park Station

For more on the architect Charles Holden see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/11/holden-goes-underground.html

For more on London Underground’s Grade 1 listed iconic HQ, 55, Broadway, see;

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

For the history of London Underground and one of the world’s Great Railway Journeys see;

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

Though we take it for granted, and frequently curse it to high heaven, the London Underground is a wonder. The Tube network is the oldest and longest underground railway system serving a major city. Its history goes back to 1863, its conception even earlier.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/10/londons-wunderground.html


Aldwych Tube Station with the tiling showing the original name "Strand"

People in London also used tube stations during the Blitz. They would buy a platform tickets and camp on the platforms for the night. Sheltering in the tube was popular because it was dry, warm and quiet down there. The government was afraid that the overcrowded platforms would disrupt the movement of troops and tried to stop the public from using the tube stations as shelters. The people refused to give them up and the government was forced to back down. In some cases underground stations were closed down and given over to the public to use during air raids.

For the unique place which is Aldwych Tube Station and its role in the Blitz see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/11/blitz-on-underground.html

For more see ARCHIBLOGS, TUBE BLOGS and TRANSPORT BLOGS in the Blog sidebar >>>>>

St. Pancras Reborn Part II

After a long dormant spell, George Gilbert Scott's magnificent Midland Grand Hotel is about to be re-opened - the jewel in the crown of the St Pancras railway redevelopment which has already seen the relocation of the Eurostar terminal. A triumph of neo-Gothic splendour, the red brick Grade I listed hotel has been painstakingly restored by architect Geoff Mann who worked with English Heritage to preserve as many of the original features as possible. Many of these date back to 1876 when the hotel first opened - making it the last and most extravagant of the great Victorian railway hotels. Grand and imposing though it was, the Midland Hotel was soon redundant - its fate doomed by the end of the railway boom and the lack of bathrooms (it had just eight bathrooms 300 rooms; an army of servants did the rest). It closed just 59 years after it opened. This magnificent high Gothic revival building was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, the High Priest of Victorian Architecture, (he also designed the Foreign Office and the Albert Memorial) in 1865. It was purpose built as the Midland Grand Hotel, the rear joining Barlow's equally splendid single-span train shed.


St Pancras Midland Grand Hotel

Back in the early 1960s, high Victorian architecture was widely considered to be hideous, fit only for demolition. Many key buildings were lost. Next in line, the highest of high Victorian, were the smoke-blackened, sinister turrets of underused St Pancras, right next to dour old King’s Cross. With the railways long since nationalised and passenger numbers falling, what need for such duplication? So, in 1966, a merged station was mooted; the wrecking ball was readied.


St Pancras Chambers as British Rail's catering headquarters in the 1960's


By then, however, the tide was turning. The Beatles and the Kinks loved Victoriana, as did the cuddly poet and conservationist John Betjeman. St Pancras was duly listed as a Grade I building, on a par with the Tower of London. But, having saved it, nobody knew what to do with it. Whilst Betjeman’s name is associated with saving St. Pancras and he certainly was a supporter the campaigning and successful lobbying was done by Jane Fowler of the Victorian Society and the great Architectural Historian, Sir Nicholas Pevsner. Sir John was more heavily involved in trying to save Euston from the Philistines.

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

When St. Pancras train station opened in 1868 there was no finer railway terminus anywhere in the world. The view down Pentonville Road towards the great gothic facade of the Midland Hotel at St. Pancras was one of the archetypal views of London.





Outside it spoke of the confidence of the Victorians and it was designed to make the public accept the new fangled rail travel as the way to go by associating it with images of past greatness. The Train Sheds were the Victorian’s cathedrals, stunning the public with their scale and the beauty of the engineering and frequently suffocating them with their sulphurous interiors! St Pancras Station is a celebration of Victorian architecture and engineering featuring two contrasting, exceptional Victorian structures, the train shed by W H Barlow & R M Ordish (1863-5) and the magnificent Midland Grand Hotel by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1868-74).

For the story of the rebirth of St. Pancras see;


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

After nearly two decades of having only bats, rats and the occasional tramp as inhabitants, the former Midland Grand Hotel beside London’s St Pancras station is at last about to open its doors to paying guests in May, re-christened the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel London. The restoration of the grand Victorian-Gothic structure cost more than £150 million, but by all accounts it was money well spent. It is one of London’s most high profile restoration projects, and created within the former St. Pancras Chambers 67 residential apartments, a penthouse and a 244-bedroom Five Star Marriott Renaissance Hotel.







The Midland Grand Hotel, the salmon-coloured Gothic fantasia that introduces St Pancras station to London, should not by rights exist. It has spent more of its 127-year life as a problem, a failing building ill-suited to the purposes it was supposed to serve.


The hotel lounge 1907


Even at conception, its existence was rackety and perilous. As the author Simon Bradley recounted in his book on St Pancras, it was the last and most extravagant of the great Victorian railway hotels, costing 14 times more than its nearby rival the Great Northern. It opened when the railway boom was turning to bust, the 19th century's equivalent of the bursting of the dotcom bubble. A floor was shaved off the proposals in an effort to cut costs, and the lavish ornament cheapened. Oak was substituted with cheaper deal. For the completion of its interiors, its celebrated and workaholic architect Sir George Gilbert Scott was replaced with a more malleable practice.




The Dining Room 1907 and 2005

The Midland Grand still managed to be one of the most spectacular Gothic Revival buildings anywhere and, for a decade or two, the epitome of luxury. It represented industrial wealth in medieval form. Sanctified with the style of cathedrals, it was an exotic bloom grown out of the muck and coal of the industrial Midlands. Indeed the structure was fashioned from an amazing six million red bricks made from the clay of the Midlands of England and transported to London by rail. No doubt this fantasy in brick delighted the bones of one of Britain’s greatest architects and son of a bricklayer Sir John Soane who is interred in St Pancras Churchyard behind the station. Indeed the grandson of the architect George Gilbert Scott was Giles Gilbert Scott who designed the famous red telephone box based on Sir John Soane’s mausoleum and went on to design many famous buildings in red brick including Battersea and Bankside Power Stations (the latter now the Tate Modern) and the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal. We are not quiet finished with architectural trivia here for as an apprentice architect the writer Thomas Hardy was involved in the controversial clearing of part of the churchyard to build the railway tracks into St. Pancras.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2011/02/sir-john-soanes-museum_16.html

But the hotel business moved on and it faded from fashion - not least because its handsome rooms came without bathrooms. It closed in 1935, after which it became offices for the railway company. After the coming of British Rail, it became the base of the company's catering division, from which crimes against gastronomy were plotted for buffets across the land. Partitions, suspended ceilings and fluorescent lights sliced mercilessly through the hotel's florid detail.


Ceiling in main stairway



What at its opening was called “the most perfect in every possible respect in the world”, would be called “completely obsolete and hopeless” by one chairman of the railway company. Not even architectural historians liked it – they mostly thought it too flashy and vulgar, and could not forgive the way it obscured the more innovative steel structure of the station roof behind. They preferred simpler, more chaste stations, like King's Cross.

There were open attempts to demolish it, until a Grade I listing in 1967 meant it had to stay. In 1988, the office workers moved out, after the building was declared unsafe. In 1993-5, £9 million of public money was spent on restoring the exterior but the building remained unused.


Former booking office


Now, 75 years since it closed as a hotel, the arduous, expensive struggle to find it a prosperous future is nearly over. The conversion of one half of it into 67 apartments is now complete and this week the rest of it, together with a new rear extension, will open as a 245-bedroom Marriott Renaissance hotel, designed by the architects RHWL and Richard Griffiths. By any measure of value engineering, or cost-benefit analysis, it should not be there. The fact that it is can be attributed to the power of fantasy — a power whose effects can be measured in hundreds of millions of pounds.

I toured 'St Pancras Chambers' as the empty hotel had recently been known, during the Open London Weekend in 2005 and was deeply impressed not to say stunned by its musty grandeur. Important features we saw included the curved Dining Hall, the wonderful Grand Staircase, and the drawing room which is built across the West Front. The full richness of the interior will become apparent now the hotel is completed. The delightful staircases, curving dining rooms, and riotous stencilling and plasterwork will become visible. It is, however, already possible to see that, in the sheer fact of this building finally returning to active use, something extraordinary has happened.

In the years when the hotel was threatened, Sir John Betjeman said that the Midland Grand Hotel was “too beautiful and too romantic to survive”. He was wrong: it has survived for precisely these reasons. Beauty and romance will make people pay more for flats and hotel rooms, and have inspired huge efforts over decades on the building's behalf.





The building is also a rebuke to all those who wanted to demolish it in the name of efficiency and modernity. Fifty years ago they were many, but the idea now seems inconceivable. There are currently similar mutterings about a work of George Gilbert Scott's grandson Giles, Battersea Power Station. Anyone who doubts the wisdom of preserving the latter should go to St Pancras and see what an awkward pile of old bricks can do. If I was to single out one visionary responsible for this rebirth of the Grandest Dame amongst London Hotels it is Harry Handelsman of Manhattan Loft Corporation who was originally involved in 2005 in a joint venture to build the apartments but who ended up taking over nearly the entire project. His, and English Heritage’s, insistence in recreating the Victorian craftsmanship of the original has resulted in a truly stunning reincarnation. Welcome back St. Pancras. Welcome back to the Midland Grand Hotel. Welcome back the Golden Age of Railways.



For more on how the railways changed London (and then the world!) see;


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


CGI of the interior of the new Marriott Renaissance hotel

Last Shuttle from Chesham

The Last day of the Chesham Shuttle card showing a Metropolitan saddle tank engine pulling into Chesham Station.

Today was a day when railway history was marked on the Chesham Branch of the Metropolitan Railway when the last shuttle from Chesham departed after running for 118 years since 1892. Up to today for most of the day a 4-car train operates as a shuttle service to and from Chalfont & Latimer station, on the main line to Amersham and Aylesbury. In February 2009, following a consultation the previous year, Transport for London announced that Chesham would have a regular through service to central London from Sunday 12th December 2010.

The double track line from Rickmansworth to Chalfont Road (now Chalfont & Latimer) and the single line beyond to Chesham were opened in July 1889. In 1892 the double track was extended from Chalfont Road through Amersham and Great Missenden to Aylesbury, albeit to a temporary terminus in Brook Street as the GWR refused access to its station until 1893. At Aylesbury the line joined the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway which the Metropolitan had acquired in 1891. However this line was not doubled until 1897 when the Metropolitan started to run services from Baker Street to Verney Junction.


The first Metropolitan train at Chesham, July 1889

As I have pointed out before it is probably true to say that there is no Tube Station on London Underground which its community more closely identifies with than this branch line to Chesham. So much so that in 1889 when the railway opened the townspeople raised the funds to have the line built an extra half mile into the centre of town. It meant that this small Buckinghamshire town straddling the valley of the River Chess which gives it its name is directly connected to the West End and City of London; indeed it had its own direct fast trains, the Chesham Flyers, which ran “fast” into the City. Today Chesham has a population of 20,000 and won’t grow any further as it is surrounded by hills which are “Green Belted”, where development is prohibited to maintain green space around London. Indeed, as all the roads into Chesham are steeply sloping there are times in icy winter when the almost 4 miles of the “Chesham Branch” have been its lifeline to the outside world.


Chesham Station

So today at midday an assorted crew of aficionados, local residents, railway enthusiasts and London Underground personalities gathered on the platform at Chesham Station to bid farewell to the shuttle on its last official round trip from Chesham to Chalfont and Latimer. The Chesham Shuttle has been a unique service on this Branch Line and has reinforced the town’s identification with the Underground. Because it has been operated by a small pool of drivers they have a rapport with the residents many of who they know personally. After 118 years the new 8 Car S Stock Trains being introduced in 2011 mean that the 4 car EMU shuttle based on the existing A60 Metropolitan Line Stock is being retired. The new stock consists of 8 connected walk through carriages which cannot be accommodated in the bay at Chalfont and Latimer Station at the other end of the branch. So instead of the shuttle Chesham will have two direct trains an hour into London and Amersham which currently has 6 per hour will reduce to 4 per hour plus the stopping Chiltern Railway services.




The "Last Shuttle" entering Chesham

The current shuttle is designated A60 stock (A for Amersham and 60 representing 1960 their year of planned fleet release). The doorplates on the carriages have the name of their Sheffield manufacturer “Cravens” and the year 1961 but in fact this “1960” stock was only introduced on the Branch in 1962 when sufficient numbers were delivered. These units are the largest trains on the Underground. They are now almost 50 years old and whilst the whole fleet was extensively refurbished in recent years they are operating well beyond their design life, they must have clocked up an incredible mileage.


Interior of A60 Stock


Doorplate on A60 Stock

The new trains which will replace the A60 stock from 2011 are officially called 'S Stock' and they're very different to the Metropolitan's long-serving 1960s workhorses. They will serve around 40 per cent of the Tube network on the sub-surface lines, will have comfort cooling, walk-through carriages with CCTV coverage in each one, plus improved accessibility. The Metropolitan Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines are known as sub-surface lines because underground sections run just below street level rather than in deep level tunnels.


The new London Underground Sub-surface Stock

The front of the new trains is red, with the destination displayed electronically. The doors are red too, with a button on each which looks like it needs to be pressed to gain entrance. But no, the doors pull apart automatically on stopping at each platform, and with a definite swish rather than a clunk. Oh, and there's only one carriage. Technically speaking there are eight, but they're all joined together to create one long articulated snake allowing passengers to walk all the way from one end to the other if they so wish.




S Stock showing inter-carriage connector

Once aboard passengers will be struck by the space. Traditional Metropolitan line carriages are full of places to sit, and these new replacements most definitely aren't. Most of the seats run along the edge, facing away from the windows, and there are only a handful of 4-somes where family groups might choose to locate. Several of the seats flip up to make way for wheelchairs or pushchairs, or to provide additional standing room if things get too crowded. There are only 30 seats in each new carriage, compared to more than 50 in the old, which is a significant reduction of approximately 150 places to sit in each S Stock train. That's not a problem in the centre of town where journeys are brief and crowding is high. But on the commuter run to Amersham, or Uxbridge, or Watford, not having anywhere to sit for up to an hour is going to frustrate hundreds of post-work travellers daily so it will be interesting to see the reaction of the denizens of Chesham to this feature.


The characteristic London Underground Moquette seat covering for the S Stock

Another innovation inside the carriages may be more welcome - scrolling displays which tell you the train's destination, and which station's coming up next, and whether the train's fast, semi-fast or not. Automated voice messages will played too, which customers on the Met have never previously had to experience. The seats have smart new Moquette, covered in regularly-spaced pairs of pink/purple and yellow/green rectangles. But there are no longer any racks on which to stash your briefcase, nor any hooks on which to hang your overcoat. People of Metroland, your new trains are no longer middle class, they're 21st century egalitarian.


S Stock interior

One feature of the new trains which Bozza Johnson has trumpeted but which I would take issue with is “Air Conditioning.” Well the S Stock spec, according to the manufacturers, calls for the ambient temperature inside the carriage to be 2 degrees Celsius less than the external air temperature when in “cooling mode.” So this is more properly described as “Comfort cooling” rather than air conditioning and as it has to be achieved in a box with three double doors opening every 2 minutes in the central area it is particularly wasteful technology. It also adds weight to the trains which is reflected in the motive power usage and extra complexity which will be reflected in maintenance. For these reasons the new stock has the same carbon footprint as the stock it is replacing, not a great leap forward in energy efficiency after 50 years? There is a lot of media hype each year as lazy editors send pup journalists out to do “meltdown on the Tube” stories but this is a short lived problem and mainly on the deep tube lines where trains can not be “air conditioned.” How does “cooling the Tube” compare as an investment priority with the clear legal obligations and moral imperative to make the system more accessible to the 10% of the population who are disabled or mobility impaired? Air conditioning is inherently wasteful technology developed in days of carbon irresponsibility and the world needs to look for better more sustainable low energy solutions – compare the greedy energy use of Dubai, that fallen icon of vulgar conspicuous consumption, with the city of Chandigarh in India designed by Le Corbusier where every building has its climate controlled without the use of air conditioning.


S Stock trial run on Metropolitan Line

Metroland was the term coined by Metropolitan Railway and taken up by the poet Sir John Betjeman to describe the new green suburbs made possible by this railway – indeed he used a speeded up trip on the Chesham Branch for the opening title sequence of his famous documentary. A century ago, the Metropolitan Railway had been extended from a profitable base in central London through the sparsely populated countryside to the north-west of Buckinghamshire, by Sir Edward Watkin, a contentious Victorian entrepreneur. This push through the Chilterns was part of his ambitious scheme to link Manchester by rail to Paris. Although Watkins’s plans failed with his death, a number of the untoward consequences of his actions fortuitously put his successors at the 'Met' in a unique position to exploit the surplus land adjacent to their lines, under the banner of 'Metro-land'.


The driver of the Last Shuttle

This aspirational promotional campaign created the image of an idealistic post-war lifestyle being based upon the concept of affordable housing of an individualistic character, set in pleasant countryside and yet within easy reach of London by the 'Met'. The propagation of the 'Metro-land' brand led to its wide adoption by the media and incorporation in our culture as epitomising a way of life. Indeed, it was so successful that the Met had to embark on a continuing programme of improving capacity to match the resulting growth in commuting. Set in a convenient countryside, these commuters were catered for by a varied and fascinating railway and the estates it created as part of Metro-land, were immortalised by John Betjeman - becoming part of our heritage.


Dr. Clive Foxell CBE

Well there is no better example of this ideal than the country market town of Chesham nestled snugly in a Chilterns valley and connected to the “Big Smoke” by this historic branch. We were fortunate on the last shuttle to have a commentary from Dr. Clive Foxell CBE on the storied history of the branch. Clive is a former MD of BT and author of many railway and history tomes including “Rails to Metroland.” Being born in Harrow, living in Chesham and having started his career as a railway apprentice he is the Sage of Metroland. After the last official shuttle returned to the platform at Chesham from its trip to Chalfont and Latimer a raffle was held for one of the commemorative headboards with the money raised going to the “Railway Children” charity which London Underground supports. The other headboard is fittingly going to the excellent Chesham Museum. Thanks to Angela Back, General Manager, Stuart Burnett, Performance Manager, and all the Metropolitan Line staff who ensured the end of the shuttle after 118 years was properly marked.


Rails to Metroland

As for Chesham from tomorrow they can look forward to the convenience and comfort of quicker direct trains to the West End and the City of London with step free access at Chesham and no awkward change, delay and exposure to the elements at Chalfont and Latimer. And when the swish S Stock is introduced in 2011 they will have a smoother more comfortable trip again. Maybe a new age of Metro-Land dawns?


Memories and photos being shared at Chesham Station


Chesham Museum site;

http://www.cheshammuseum.org.uk/

For more on Metroland see;

http://www.metroland.org.uk/

For more on Chesham and its railway see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/05/chesham-station.html


The shuttle at Chesham Road (now Chalfont & Latimer station) in 1892

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