The C11 Route

Archway to Brent Cross (Tescos)

Thursday April 19^th 2012

April was being true to form – frequent showers – and we boarded this route just outside the facility-free station of Archway: presumably it is assumed that anyone needing a loo would dive into the nearby Whittington hospital, which essentially provides the first and second stops on this very North London, very Camden borough route. For Linda this was a nostalgia trip taking her to places familiar from school days and school friends’ homes; for Jo it was a tour round parts of her ‘home’ borough. 

Leaving both physical and mental health services behind us we trundled down Dartmouth Park and I was expecting us to pass the covered reservoir. But no we were heading downhill to catch both the Highgate Branch Library, looking nicely clean, and the corner of Highgate Cemetery. For those of you who have not been, a guided tour is worth the wait and cost.

Dartmouth Park morphs into the rather less upmarket Gospel Oak which has an excellent combination of some of Camden’s older housing stock, some excellent and undoubtedly pricey family homes and a handy Overground terminus turning what was once the North London loop into an interchange. Three achieving schools are near neighbours and combine their 6^th forms. William Ellis School used to provide actors for my school play’s male parts and thus access to useful male contacts, but I digress.

By now we were crossing the 214 and C2 routes as we edged past Parliament Hill Fields, always a popular end of Hampstead Heath especially for the views. Rather than an indifferent photo how about a more evocative poem from local hero Sylvia Plath.  She notes a river and of course one of London’s less lost but nonetheless not very visible rivers The Fleet wends its way along here – giving its name to Fleet Road, along which the C11 runs when going west, passing more delightful property then emerging at South End Green – precious little green but a fancy fountain. Then it’s our second hospital – the Royal Free (yes and keep it that way) – with a short nip past the The George (III we thought) down Rosslyn Hill till it turns down England’s Lane and the delights of Primrose Hill, beloved of the rich and famous.

Emerging at Swiss Cottage we noticed that Camden are planning to open the UCL Academy in September 2012. Today the buildings did not look all that complete (4 months to go) but by the time you read this it should be up and running – a very exciting new addition to Inner London schooling. The small bus negotiates the multiple lanes of the Swiss Cottage one-way system with ease and then skirts off the Finchley Road (it is most adept at avoiding main roads) behind the veteran Waitrose and along the red-bricked villa lined streets of South to West Hampstead.

More lost rivers lurk beneath – this time the Tyburn on its way from Primrose Hill through the West End to the Thames. Also nearby we spotted the entrance to Westbere Copse and though familiar with the area this was a new ‘green spot’ for us though apparently only open at weekends.

If its serious open green space you hanker after you need to wait the few more stops while the C11, pretty empty by now, trundles through the Clitterhouse Estate and Hendon Football Club’s former ground, now poetically derelict as captured in this silent film . The RIP notice clamped to the perimeter fence refers to the ground rather than Mark Lewis, the film’s maker.

From here, joining other routes heading in the same direction, we were able to cross over the North Circular in reasonable time and come to a halt in the so-called Brent Cross Bus Station. Jo’s theory was that when building London’s first 20^th Century shopping mall they thought only a few routes might drop by. As things stand there are now 11 routes starting/finishing here and not enough room for any of them. 

For us it was time for a comfort break and then a chilly and damp dash across the mean footpaths that take any foolhardy pedestrians across the North Circular, the River Brent and London’s equivalent to Spaghetti Junction to the other side.

Our trip had taken some ten minutes over the 40 promised for this nostalgic but very interesting ‘rat run’ of a journey through NW London. 

The C10 Route

Victoria Station to Canada Water Station (is this C for Canada Water then?)

Thursday November 29^th 2012

Here we were at Victoria Station for the first time in years – many of our very early 1-100 routes had started here but we have travelled so far out as we progressed to the high number routes that it was quite a shock to tangle with the rebuilding, and no-go areas that is the front of Victoria Station. I’ve scoured a few websites but while there is lots about the main and underground stations there is very little about the buses --- I suppose they will have to tuck in where they can?

Still the forecourt was awash with men in TFL reflective jackets (actually on a picket line I discovered later) so we found a couple to asked where the C10 started – imagine our slight surprise when he pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at an App (which I could have done) but still seemed uncertain. We asked him if it was a TFL phone he said that no, they had taken them all back after the Olympics, and he had to buy his own and download his own app (they are free). When I asked what had happened to all those TFL phones he said they were ‘hired’. At the information desk they sent us through an arch and round to Grosvenor Gardens – a stop we knew well.   Waiting amongst the teeming tourists (this is freezing November, remember) was a triple amputee in a chair hovering and as he let most of the other routes pass we assumed he wanted the slightly less frequent C10, but no he seemed to get his amusement watching the world go by with a fag in his remaining hand. Another passenger asked if the C10 passed London Bridge Station and was told ‘no’, but stayed on regardless.

We got away from the bus melée that is Victoria reasonably, swiftly passing mostly office blocks from different eras, some surrounded by surprising amounts of that curly barbed wire.   There were some slowing road works on Ebury Bridge and Jo reminded me of the comparatively recent (2004) unearthing of a Battle of Britain Hurricane Plane that had crash landed here. Shortly after this I saw a pub called the White Ferry which turns out to be a ‘backpacker hostel’ which makes perfect sense when you think of the many overseas and out of London visitors that still arrive via Victoria Station or Victoria Coach Station.

The C10 makes its way along Lupus Street where there are a few shops dating from the building of the extensive Churchill Gardens Estate, architects including Powell and Moya. There was a collective gasp on the bus as we watched an elderly lady lose her footing and fall down by the kerb, but it was not thought she had wanted the bus so after a decent pause to ensure she was getting some help we moved on, passing both Pimlico Library and Pimlico School, which in their current incarnation well post-date the estate.

There was also a blue plaque to a Walter Clopton Wingfield, who is named as the ‘father of Lawn Tennis’ so now you know. St George’s Road brought us out by Vauxhall Bridge but no, the C10 continues along the North Bank of the Thames passing behind the Tate Museum and sundry Peabody Buildings to emerge in time to cross the much quieter Lambeth Bridge. More Etonians, muttered Jo as we passed Lambeth Palace (the new Archbishop of Canterbury being an Etonian and former business man) and then came alongside the extensive spread of St Thomas’ Hospital – from this approach you see also the back of the Evelina, which is one of the more imaginatively designed and welcoming Children’s Hospitals. St Thomas’ also houses the Nightingale Museum. After the substantial roundabout at the end of Westminster Bridge (we had already been over once today on the 453) we went under Waterloo station and its railway lines, passing the entrance to the Necropolis Railway, which took trainloads of coffins down to Brookwoood Cemetery after burial space was running out in Central London. It may come to this again unless cremation becomes the norm for those to whom it is permitted. 

[There is an excellent historical detective novel called ‘The Necropolis Railway’ by Andrew Martin, who loves his railways and, though not a Londoner, the Underground too.]

Before too long we arrived at Elephant and Castle and for once the novelty of stopping at the first rather than the third stop along London Road, and then a distant glimpse of the Shard living up to its name.  We noted that finally the South Bank University seemed to be making a move on the corner pub and other properties, which had stood empty with fake fronts for many years. Now we were south of the River the passenger numbers crept up. The sights of Southwark and Borough include the Inner London Crown Court. While seeking some clue to the age of the building I came across this site, which offers you the possibility of room hire – for weddings? Perhaps not everyone’s choice for a jolly time? The Dragon café alerted us to the fact we were about to pass St George the Martyr Church.  Jo felt merely killing a dragon did not warrant martyrdom and sainthood but this George was put to death by Diocletian (the Roman Emperor who died in his bed in the palace at Split – I’m digressing wildly here) so perhaps earned the requisite brownie points for sainthood?

Long Lane came next  and we seemed to be skirting the trendier and newer bits of Bermondsey here – 

From fine dining to flats it all seemed to be happening. But more of Bermondsey is old – we presumed that Abbey Street referred to the former Cluniac Abbey dissolved by Henry VIII, but every time anyone tried to build long-interred bodies kept turning up some as late as 2006. The monks of course had a source of water for their Abbey life, so hereabouts is the course of the ‘lost’ River Neckinger, remembered in a street name and with the Mills still standing (better quality photos  courtesy of  Andrew who has been walking the Lost Rivers).

Jamaica Road is also quite an evocative name and as a more major route took us quite fast to Bermondsey Station and beyond, past the end of Southwark Park and the newly enhanced roundabout with its metal cyclist sculpture. This is of course close to the end/start of the Rotherhithe Tunnel, a much better kept secret than the Blackwall Tunnel, with signs also to the Brunel Museum. Amazing to think that Brunel designed this aged 19!

A glimpse of Surrey water also reminded us what a thriving Dockland area this had been, some of which is commemorated in the murals along  Deal Porters Way.

The C10 does not take the easy route along Salter Way but the older and much narrower Rotherhithe Street, where there is just a row of housing, a mixture of older local authority flats and newer builds, between the road and the Thames.  Another educational resource the Pumphouse is on this route plus a series of evocative street names – King & Queen Wharf, Pacific Walk and Globe Walk. We had time to note these as the bus encountered a dustcart collecting bins and a parked removal van (pantechnicon size) so there was a certain amount of stand-off with the bin men, more used to these streets, making way for the C10.  Two local pubs included the Blacksmiths’Arms, nicely maintained by the Fullers Brewery (bit off their patch here) and The Clipper,  which bills itself as handy for Surrey Docks Farm, rather less well-known than its Isle of Dogs equivalent at Mudchute.

This landmark just about brought us back onto Redriff Road and a short run into Canada Water Underground/Overground and Bus Hub, in 1 hour 5 minutes. This excellent route had taken us from the wealth of Victoria and Pimlico though historic and vibrant Bermondsey and Rotherhithe with at least 3 museums, a farm and probably much else that we missed…   

   

The C3 Route

Clapham Junction  to Earls Court (Tescos)

Thursday February 9^th 2012

We had arrived at Clapham Junction by the very pleasant 295 and walked round the corner threading our way through a range of road and pavement works – it looks as though they are widening the pavements but by the time you read this all should be sorted. We had watched one C3 pass us by so were really pleased as another arrived at the bus stop at the same time as we did. The bus seemed a bit scratched and elderly inside and not really heated – I wonder if they demote the higher status buses down to the letter ones sort of like children’s hand me downs??

Anyway we headed back to the main crossroads and the first significant landmark was ‘The Falcon’ pub on the corner. I am grateful to Paul Talling (London’s Lost Rivers) and his explanation that the falcon was a crest of the St John’s, the big landowners round here, so not only did they name pubs for them/it (The Falcon) but also wished the same name (Falcon Brook) on the river that ran through here and which had started life back on Streatham Hill and Tooting Common. Like many a lost river it was turned into a sewer which joins the Thames at Battersea Creek, taking more or less the same route as the bus.

On our left as we headed down Plough Road was the splendid High View School, built 1890 when the London Board was building high and large – now well gated in.  The tiger mural in the playground was most impressive if not scary. If anything more scary was the rather shabby looking Travel Lodge, which looked in need of some TLC on the outside. Just at the Junction of York Road is the building that once housed the Price’s Candle factory which has a detailed history since 1830.

Thirty or more years ago this part of London smelt very ripe – between the candles, the old Sugar Refinery across the river, the Ram Brewery in Wandsworth and Battersea Power Station, plus the polluting traffic of York Road, to walk here was to put your lungs at risk. The Refinery went in 1979, the Power Station closed in 1983 (the beginning of a long and shameful history of greed and neglect), the candles in 2001, and the Brewery in 2006.  The air is undoubtedly cleaner though I would not use the word ’fresh’ and the industries have been replaced by a high density of new residential building, with more to come.

Just before Wandsworth Bridge you can see the solid and Grade II listed Wandsworth Bus Garage

out of which run the open top tour buses of the ‘Original Tour’. Given that you can get almost as good a tour from a much cheaper London Bus I shall not give them more of a plug.  Today the river matched the sky for grey and probably for chill too, though the tide was out.

Once over the bridge the C3 turns right along Townmead Road towards Sands End and Imperial Wharf. The mixture is very strange along here – on one side are tightly packed streets of terrace houses which perhaps housed the potters and workers for de Morgans’ Fulham Works and on the other ruined buildings, probably the old Fulham Wharves. Several have been replaced by prestigious and gated developments

now going by the name of Chelsea Harbour.  They even got their own new built Overground Station – Imperial Wharf – to which the Route C3 comes the closest.

A further sign of the older industrial heritage is of course the Lots Road Power Station, which has now been closed for nearly 10 years. Again the character of the neighbourhood has changed: smaller homes were originally for workers whose local employers would have included the power station and wharves and the smaller homes for those families but now Lots Road itself seems to be full of antique shops and auction houses, especially as the C3 nears the Kings Road.

From here in order to speed cross-London traffic there is strict one-way routing and as today we were heading north it was along Gunter Grove we drove, at a good steady pace, crossing in quick succession the King’s Road, the Fulham Road and finally the Brompton Road. On a rather grey and increasingly chilly day there was the cheering sight of several camellias in bloom… and then there we were terminating outside the huge Tesco’s, a bus stop away from Earls Court Station.  The trip took under half an hour and included a river crossing the former industrial heritage of both Battersea and Fulham Thames side and the more recent developments that had taken place.

The C2 Route

Victoria Station to Parliament Hill Fields
Monday August 9^th 2009

We found ourselves boarding this rather nifty and handy route as a default option when unable to progress beyond Victoria on our planned route 24 (see about 4 years earlier!).  It was 11AM, there were four of us and London was about as full of tourists as it could be.

We started off north via Grosvenor Gardens, just about spotting a blue plaque for FE Smith, Earl of Birkenhead (Lawyer & Statesman 1872-1930 – also leader of the British team in the Chariots of Fire Olympics, impersonated on the silver screen by Nigel Davenport) away to the left. As always we peer over the wall of Buckingham Palace Gardens in the hope of spotting something or someone but too much greenery prevails.

Tim noted the the Iron Trades Building (obviously refurbished since we passed this way) before we circled the Wellington Arch, and its war memorials, and for once headed down Piccadilly, but only as far as Stratton Street, where the bus with some difficulty took a left turn – it was during this bit of the journey that we had to admire the skill of the driver negotiating his double-decker through some quite narrow (and expensive) streets, and you can fully understand that this has historically been a single-decker route.

Taking this option meant we passed the Mayfair Hotel, where a blue plaque informed us that Bert Ambrose and his band had played, then round into Berkeley Square, home of more luminaries such as George Canning and Clive of India, and more recently Norman Hartnell,  designer of the Queen’s frocks, and those of several other well known women of the time.

Intriguingly the bus manages to penetrate both Conduit Street and Saville Row, where you can still get a mean whistle and flute for your wedding.  Past the police station, the route emerges into Regent Street and straight across the mess that was today Oxford Circus to Lower Regent Street and the BBC. All Souls Langham Place always looks good, with the BBC expanding (expansion complete 4 years later) behind it: ‘Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation’ and the roof top site of an an impromptu U2 concert. 

  Portland Place is rich in both statues and MORE blue plaques to Quintin Hogg and Sikorski and Thomas Gage (the British Commander who lost the Battle of Bunker Hill, not the one who introduced the greengage plum) and Frances Hodgson Burnett, the children’s author who gave us Little Lord Fauntleroy, but more significantly The Secret Garden.

Out past Great Portland Street station and the International Students’ House on the corner just before crossing the Euston Road and continuing, at some speed it should be said, up Albany Street, where we passed the pub, ‘The Queen’s Head and Artichoke’ (are they interchangeable?) and yet more blue plaques, this time to Henry Mayhew 1812-1887 (Founder of Punch and author of London Labour and the London Poor), Constant Lambert and W W Jacobs – an author none of us had heard of (though ‘63 Regular’ recognised him as the author of the horror story The Monkey’s Paw – Poor/Paw, do we have a theme going here?) who died in 1943. This was the place to get off for the Zoo, and lots of passengers did.  Albany Street also has Markson Pianos (as endorsed by Arsene Wenger no less) if you fancy a little Bach.

Parkway, which takes us to Camden Town tube station, has a range of eateries, often changing ones but two fairly solid pubs, namely The Spread Eagle and the presumably spurious ‘Earl of Camden’.  We left Camden Town for another day and headed up the Kentish Town Road crossing both the Camden Lock and a building calling itself Todd-AO which is in fact a small production company trading somewhat misleadingly?. Old Dairy Mews indicated what once used to be but now is an area criss-crossed by railways, and a huge UPS Depot at Kentish Town.  Fonte dei Marmi  has GLASS baths, besides which the name caught my eye as we used to holiday in an Italian resort called Forte dei Marmi, exchanging the fountains for the forts.

Highgate Road took us slightly uphill past some of Camden’s best schools: Parliament Hill, William Ellis and La Sainte Union, all still familiar from my school days, especially the middle one.

It took us just under an hour and we were able to use the toilets in Parliament Hill Fields  (poetry alert in the link not the toilets obviously) as we crossed over and out of Hampstead Heath, still in trust to the City of London corporation.

  
All this fun, and possibly the record for Blue Plaques (10), in under an hour!

1. Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
2. Bert Ambrose
3. Clive of India
4. George Canning
5. Norman Hartnell
6. Thomas Gage
7. Frances Hodgson Burnett
8. Henry Mayhew
9. Constant Lambert
10. W.W. Jacobs

PS> Much has changed since we took this trip Oxford Circus and the BBC have finished their building works and others have started.

The C1 Route

Monday 9 November 2009

If B stands for Bexleyheath, then we assume that C stands for Central, and so we had travelled these routes somewhat earlier in the project.  Actually, here's an interesting summary from TfL in answer to someone's question about this.  There are only 5 'C' buses, though in the 1990s there was also a C12, which made its way from Kings Cross to Finchley Road Station.

The C1 is a more West End creature altogether: this was our  fourth route of the day, and it brought us back from the White City Bus Station, in its attractive setting behind Westfields, to Victoria Station, from where it is comparatively easy for both Linda and me to return to normal life. We got started at 14.10, wondering whether it really would take us 60 minutes as advertised.

A single decker of the old fashioned kind with one door, it retraced part of the 49 route, carrying a number of obviously successful shoppers and passing several churches including St John the Baptist, home of the Ripples Montessori School.  We liked the autumn colours in Cadogan Gardens. 

We regularly regret the demise of the Commonwealth Institute, scene of enjoyable times when the children were young, especially the mechanical cow;  but it does seem odd that such prime real estate should still just be crumbling.  It seems that this is all about the change and by the time you read this it may be a whole new world.

We passed a pub called The Prince of Teck.  We have complained before that pub websites never explain the names, and this one is no exception, so I have put in a link to some information about the man.  On we went, along the Earls Court Road, and then along the Old Brompton Road, and the Royal Society of British Sculptors. We assume that by the time this blog is posted, the huge unoccupied house at 88 Queen's Gate will have been squatted in or otherwise restored to proper use. Actually, it seems to be a hotel, now.

Back to South Kensington Station, where the traffic flow has much improved since our last visit and then past the V and A  and the Brompton Oratory to reach Harrods and the forthcoming Moncler shop with an interesting photo in its window.

Our bus was held on three occasions to 'regulate the service', but even so, as we passed Jenny Packham's little shop front. we realised we would be in Victoria in much less than an hour, and we were, pulling in at 14.55.

It is a reminder of how long our project has been going, that we had no idea what this 'love your bank' stuff was about, and were more interested in the window cleaners.  To think that the Metro Bank was justr a gleam in someone's eye...

The B16 Route

Bexleyheath  Bus garage to Kidbrooke Station

Monday February 18^th  2013

By now you know that the B buses belong around Bexleyheath, so you will not be surprised that this bright morning found us waiting just outside the garage for a 4-times an hour single-decker. It arrived a bit before its time but drove very steadily along its East/West course.   Since we were last in the borough of Bexley’s only major retail and administrative centre, someone (the council, presumably) had decided the main roads and pavements needed attention so progress was slow through a series of single lane chicanes. The first stop was at the Clock Tower, which is of course where most passengers got on. 

After that comes the Broadway, part of the old Watling Street,  generally acknowledged to be the Romans’ route of choice between London and Dover, and probably cutting a straight line over the heaths and avoiding the muddier low-lying areas (aka Thamesmead.  For modern-day Bexley this means the approach to the centre where the more individual shops and restaurants can be found. ‘Bel Amore’ is not a cosy Italian trattoria but in fact sells wedding gowns, but the ‘Laughing Buddha’ cheerily promotes a restaurant with its fat-bellied poster boy glinting in the sun. Best of all was the legal firm offering ‘Free Alien Abduction Cover with every Insurance sold’; we approve of this kind of self-publicity.

Just as you might think you were approaching the Crook Log with all its pleasures this route turns off for Pickford Lane and Bexleyheath’s rather far-flung railway station, though to be fair it serves the 1930s  expansion of homes built around here.

After the detour to the station the B route returns to the straight and narrow, which is Welling High Street, still thriving enough to have attracted some big brand supermarkets. This was one of the few familiar stretches on this route as we had passed this way before. However we were to plunge into more residential areas, namely that other 1930s development, Falconwood,  with its property builder referred to as a ‘relentless’. The bus crosses a narrow bridge over the railway and just before the station emerges onto what must have been seen as the jewel in their development: Falconwood Parade and Triangle. It certainly gives this otherwise somewhat bland area a strong focal point and looks well-maintained.  A veritable Tudor village green with only the village stocks missing…

After calling by the station the route heads into the ‘wood’ part of the locality, and we wizzed past several stops passing between Oxleas Wood  and Eltham or Shephardleas woods – really all one but now bisected by the Rochester Way.  Here is where you can join the Green Chain walk, which links open spaces through SE London and overlaps with the Capital Ring. The woods are denser than might first appear and you have to make some decisions about directions taken as you walk through, which is rarely the case in London walking. The bus has to do some serious down, up and down again driving to serve the solid back streets of Eltham and neatly delivering its bus load of regulars to Eltham High Street, quite busy on this Monday morning.

By the time we had left Eltham behind the bus was nearly empty – we lost the last three passengers to the Bingo Hall stop and carried on down Eltham Hill past Sutcliffe Park, its various playing fields doubtless as waterlogged as anywhere else, and turned off to head into Kidbrooke.

What a revelation this part of the trip was. We had last passed this way, that is through the Ferrier Estate, on the 178 in February 2010 almost exactly three years ago and what a transformation. What had been a depressing site of largely boarded-up but not yet demolished blocks was now a busy building site. Almost all the old blocks had gone and a few new ones had gone up, with of course the show homes and commercial office taking pride of place. The whole area has been renamed  'Kidbrooke Village' complete with water features. The film included here would seem to be rather aspirational for as far as we could see  - yes Sainsbury’s local had arrived (presumably so that the construction workers could buy a sarnie) but little else and the station was still in its ‘tired South Eastern train’ neglected incarnation. 

 The bus route calls at Wingfield School and as this was half-term it was difficult to tell whether it was shut for the holidays or closed overall. If remaining open we wondered where its children would come from as the dense population of the former Ferrier Estate has presumably been dispersed and the new residents not yet arrived. Still it was a fascinating tour of a ‘work in progress’ and hopefully the new ‘village’ will avoid the pitfalls of its predecessors on this land.  Key to any area’s success is the quality of the transport links and certainly the B16 should retain its role as one of the bus routes linking Kidbrooke to its neighbouring and longer-established communities in South East London.

The bus comes to rest in front of the low-lying Kidbrooke Station from where we made our separate ways home.