Liverpool Street Station (Primrose Street) to
East Dulwich Sainsbury’s
Thursday May 29 2019
We are still waiting for a bus ‘billed’ as
Liverpool Street to depart from the vestiges of the bus station that used to be
a safe haven for waiting passengers, instead of dicing with the heavy traffic
of Broadgate as was the case today. Still locating Stop J was less painful than
for Route 35. The bus app indicated a 28 minute wait for this supposedly 12-15
minute frequency service. This seemed harsh, but then one suddenly appeared, and
we were able to go upstairs which we had mostly to ourselves.
I reminded Jo we had ridden this one
winter’s day when it was still a single decker, and of course in the opposite direction
so this felt a very different experience.
One of the differences self-evidently is
the amount of destruction and reconstruction that characterizes any trip
through the City of London – the 42 does that loop that takes it from Broadgate
and the crowds round Liverpool Street Station to Aldgate High Street again much
transformed in the last ten years – except for St Botolph’s hanging in there
and still active.
A building proclaiming itself WLS had some
very nice flower beds, clearly newly planted, but I have failed to discover
what they might be as the explanations on offer – weight loss surgery and West
London Synagogue – do not really seem to fit.
Getting into the Minories can only mean a
Tower Bridge approach and passing the Three Lords pub – England is not in
the French habit of hanging nobility but apparently these were the last three
convicted as a result of their involvement in the Jacobite Rebellion (in Jo’s
absence I am reliably informed this was the Stuarts trying to oust the Hanoverians
with their ‘Old Pretender’).
There were plenty of sightseers around
today – understandably there is great satisfaction in walking over Tower Bridge
even at street level but with the tourists spilling into the road the traffic
soon slows down – better to view both the Tower and the river though. We remembered we had visited the Design
Museum, which used to be on this South Bank just tucked in after the converted
warehouses.
The River was very high today which made a
change from some of previous crossings where there were actual beaches to be
seen. Tower Bridge Road is a very narrow approach from South London and when a
fire engine honked from behind there was very little space for other vehicles
to let it through. This is old Bermondsey and the sections closer to the river
have been modernised or gentrified but as you edge towards the Bricklayers Arms
there are more of what you might think were useful local outlets – we
especially liked the locksmith and shoe repair shop.
The Bricklayers Arms is an unlovely major
junction and the 42 only coasts along the Old Kent Road briefly before heading
off down East Street, though not the really busy market end . This is one of
the most endearing features of this route in that it avoids the obvious and
mainer stretches preferring to cut across smaller thoroughfares of SE London,
making it the only route for these intermediate stretches.
Out onto Albany Street and we were adjacent
to Burgesss Park and could appreciate all its amenities – a well-used (it was
half-term) children’s playground and skateboarding/ BMX areas as well as a hut
for pottery. There is even a historical trail to follow.
They
have inclined towards low maintenance but attractive wildflower planting …
Of course the other end of Burgess Park
opens out onto the Camberwell Road and from this point the route joins many
others to serve Camberwell Green – there has been much new building along here
and with no very close rail service all these routes will be badly needed to
get the new residents to their work and schools. O yes and of course to the
hospital: King’s College Hospital and the Maudsley opposite cater for most
ailments of the body and mind and are always busy . The helipad is complete and
now just needs the Critical Care Unit to be finished – they are the most
overspent hospital in the country and speaking from personal experience this is
because they just go ahead and do what’s necessary.
Ruskin Park is much older and has more
conventional park elements in it including a wonderful restored bandstand which
hosts music on summer weekends. It is right next to the hospital.
Further up the hill the older houses or
country that would have been here in John Ruskin’s day have been replaced by
suburban semis on one side and large blocks on the other.
Today we were not heading towards Streatham
but turning off down some very narrow (for a bus) streets into Dulwich –
another small park, Sunray Gardens is part of the Casino Avenue estate of
smaller cottage-type homes built for the soldiers returning from the Great war The original casino house was a large grand
affair belonging to a successful lawyer but eventually was demolished – nothing
to do with gambling but all to do with ‘small house’ casina in Italian apparently.
The stretch between the park and station
(North Dulwich this time ‘it’s almost as bad as Acton for numbers’ said Jo) has
schools and churches and then heads back along East Dulwich Grove where we were
not so long ago on the Number 37. The replacement health centre and additional school
on the Dulwich Hospital site seem to make slow progress.
East Dulwich Grove comes out in the heart
of East Dulwich now boasting its very own little banners (though I think Herne
Hill got there first) and I could be a bit picky and say the carved totem pole
really belongs to Peckham... however Southwark is clearly in charge here.
Once past Goose Green the bus starts the
climb up Dog Kennel Hill but turns into the Sainsbury’s site before it has to
go down a gear more. This was once the site of the Constancy Road Workhouse ,
which in its day had space for 898 inmates to include the deserving poor , and many elderly sick and infirm people thus
indicating that this part of London has always had a sizeable needy population
needing care. It was renamed St Francis in 1948 when it became part of the NHS
and continued to offer a more long term care than the acute services of the
other hospitals in the King’s Group – it was demolished in 1991 with the small
park named for it with paths leading to a large Sainsbury’s . It used to house
the venerable local football club Dulwich Hamlet which in its last season
managed to get into the 6th Division but the land was sold from
under it for a ‘housing development’ and the club plays elsewhere under a
different name. (Not dissimilar from the Wimbledon to Milton Keynes story of some
years back but I digress.) Was there no
way of balancing the need for housing and a local community resource?
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