The NUMBER 59 Route

Kings Cross (Wharfdale Road) to Streatham Hill

Thursday June 13 2019

Well from what concerns the photos this blog will be more like a visit to Tate Modern featuring as it does similar works to those of Monet and Rothko, rather than a record of our journey on this Number 59. The camera was on borrowed time but today it was so dark and wet the automatic flash kept cutting in.  Also it was a despised Boris Bus (can anyone seriously expect this man, whose tenure as London mayor was full of overspent vanity projects such as these buses, to run the country?) which gives poor visibility and that’s before the rain came bucketing down so three excuses for poor photos. (we were of course en route to the 45)

For a briefer but slightly sunnier account please  see our 2010  trip.

We did manage to keep dry while waiting rather over the promised 8 minutes before boarding our 59 skulking rather than enjoying a proper bus station.  The one-way system to get clear of the King’s Cross complex is always slow, and today was no exception. As the side windows were cleaner than the front ones I peered into a side street that seemed to have some kind of information board and thus discovered Keystone Crescent and this rather interesting blog entry.

We eventually made it along the Euston Road and turned down south into Upper Woburn Place – the Greek Revival Church (new St Pancras) was built to order but I do like this story about the caryatids'

I was actually looking for some explanation for the large humanoid sculptures in the side garden which you can read below.

The trundle down to Holborn was at the usual slow pace with the garden squares to the right and the hotels to the left, the latter looking fairly miserable in the rain.  Southampton Row and Aldwych were little better though it was slow enough to spot a plaque we had not noticed before telling us that Michael Faraday and others had conducted experiments between 1903 and 1967 (we sort of imagined him in the Royal Institution building where his lab is preserved) on that site.  You can just about identify the church as the bus swings round in front of King’s College with its windows of notable alumnae.

Crossing Waterloo Bridge was faster than on some days but then we slowed again in front of St John’s and the station side entrances.  This route, and it is the only one to do so, turns right at the Old Vic down Baylis Road, named for Lilian founder of the theatre of course. There seemed to be some kind of demonstration (I do like a demo , said Jo) by what is known as Waterloo Millenium Green . It was a bit hard to read the placards but we think they were students from the Oasis Academy, which is a recently founded Free School, by which I take it not part of Lambeth Education.

One of the benefits of rain of course is that the trees thrive and there was so much greenery in front of the main site of the Imperial War Museum that it was barely visible.

As more passengers boarded, which they did south of the river, we added steamed up windows to our barriers to vision.

Kennington actually has many very handsome tall houses – there are gaps of course but terraces intact enough to make an impression – and these appear on both sides of the road. There used to be huge cinema on the right , which had been Bingo Hall for years and now seems to be  flats though there was also a large building site?

At the big Kennington Junction we ran into the second of our apostles – St. Mark – and then continued down the Brixton Road, by now thoroughly steamed up, and with more passengers taking short trips to avoid being soaked.

Brixton Hill is quite heavily packed with different ages of residential blocks from the old pre-war mansion types to more utilitarian post war housing , but fewer squeezed in modern ‘developments’.  Passing Brixton Water Lane reminded us that the Effra still flows here underground and from time to time re-asserts itself though there are ways of harnessing the water and preventing flooding as this website. shows. 

I had always been a bit puzzled as to why there were two bus garages along Brixton Hill, one clearly a leftover from the  Tram days  but this link explains the upper one is used as over spill from the lower Brixton Garage, where we had, in our time, had a ‘photoshoot.’ courtesy of KFH’s Completely London magazine (Page 67 and ignore the headline) 

Proximity to the bus station is of course why the 59 terminates at Telford Hill which is no longer in Brixton and not quite in Streatham. The trees were still dripping as we emerged but our timing was lucky and we could walk the short distance to the start of the Route 45.