Books Do Furnish A Room

Wider yet: West Wickham Common to Hamsey Green

Roy and I undertook the fourth section of the London Loop on a brilliantly sunny day in early March, starting at Hayes railway station.  We looped away from the main road, through grassy tracks behind housing estates, down Pole Cat Alley to rejoin the Loop at the Doomsday Oaks – large but largely derelict stumps near the board of by-laws I featured last time.  The day started in a very urban environment, quickly becoming suburban, and then utterly rural, so much so that it was difficult to remember that you were in London at all.  We had 10 miles of walking, largely tree’d, through paths and fields of great pleasaunce.  There was no stately home, but a series of charming prospects and good views – and one near disaster, of which more anon.

Soon after the start, we walked through Coney Hall Recreation Ground, a slightly depressing collection of football pitches, playgrounds and pavilions, and a dirty concrete bollard of indeterminate shape marking “the prime meridian of the world”.  But we were soon out of the rec, and walking across to the pleasant church of St John the Baptist, which stands almost surrounded by fields and at the centre of a network of ancient pathways, yet is only a quarter of mile from a major A road and busy roundabout.  Across the roundabout, we entered Sparrows Den – more playing fields – and then into a long stretch of fine woodland, including Spring Park and Three Halfpenny Wood.  In the wood, we crossed from Bromley to Croydon, and thus from Kent to Surrey.  The woods were muddy and leafless, of course, but still lovely in the sunshine, and will shortly be alive with spring flowers.

 

Leaving these woods, we became lost, as the signing let us down – really for the first time in walks – but we soon rejoined the proper route and passed the Sandrock pub in Shirley, arriving at a quarter to noon.  We were cold and thirsty, and a drink of some kind appealed – but the pub was not open.  Now I cannot pretend that the Sandrock was an attractive pub. But it came at the right time.  But we passed on, merely buying a bottle of water in the corner shop, secure in the London Loop leaflet’s assurance that "there are numerous pubs on the route".  Reader, it was not so, and we eventually ate after every mile of the walk was done, at a time nearer tea than lunch.  But back to the walk: we entered an area of mixed woodland and heath called Addington Hills.  Addington was a nineteenth century Prime Minister who followed the mighty Pitt (the Younger) from 1801 to 1804, but I don’t know if there is any connection; he is one of the few Prime Ministers who has served another PM afterwards, in his case as Home Secretary.  He was not highly esteemed, then or later:

Pitt is to Addington, As London is to Paddington.

A viewing platform on Addington Hills gives spectacular views back towards London, very distant to the north.  Looking from heath, birch and pine across Croydon, you can certainly see the Dome, the City of London, and  - on a clearer day – Windsor Castle.

 
 

Hopes of food rose briefly when we found a restaurant just back from the viewpoint, but it was chi-chi Chinese, fluffy and expensive, not at all the place to for two muddy walkers in search of a baked potato or bowl of vegetable soup.  So on, on, across the tramline at Coombe Lane, and through the charming gardens of the 18^thcentury Heathfield House (now a local authority training centre), where we also saw some wonderful rhododendrons, that is, dead ones.   Through more muddy woods, where we found and kicked a tennis ball along, before pocketing it.  Across a road into open grassland, we gave the ball (repeatedly) to an excited dog, who chased it energetically, found a party of people learning woodland crafts and charcoal making, and made our way further south into completely rural country. 

 

We walked down green lanes (like Baker Boy Lane) with London on our right and the open country on the left, indistinguishable in field, wood and glade, through the lovely Mossyhill Shaw, and up into the lanes leading to Hamsey Green at about 3.20pm.  An obliging transport cafe, due to close at half past, provided strong tea and omelette, beans and chips, thus saving our lives, and we caught a bus to Croydon and homeward trains. The rural joy was great, but in all these walks, it has to end at a busy suburb and a railway station – but this is a price well worth paying.

 

Wider yet: Petts Wood to Hayes

For our third section of the London Loop, Roy and I had a longer day planned, almost 12 miles, and a visit en route to a notable and famous house.  We met at Petts Wood station early on a very cold morning, but for the first time, in brilliant sunshine.  We left Petts Wood and walked down a depressing shopping street, quickly leaving it for urban parkland of Jubilee Park and Crofton Woods. We came to Farnborough, which our book thought a lovely village, but I feel the author was over-influenced by the idea of a coaching inn (not exactly a rarity on the major roads out of London) and a ridiculously twee and over–ornate old smithy.  We pushed rapidly on, passing through the churchyard of St Giles the Abbott, a pleasant church with a mighty Yew, and were once more among fields and woods, although we eventually left the true and narrow way of the London Loop itself to detour to the village of Downe, home to Charles Darwin.

We arrived at Downe at lunchtime – repaired to the George and Dragon for a splendid plate of fish and chips – and then made our way across the fields to Downe House, Charles Darwin’s home for 40 years, and now in the guardianship of English Heritage.  He came here, hypochondriac or invalid, to escape the noise and social pressures of London, and stayed for the rest of his life.  Curiously for a man who had sailed around the world on the tiny Beagle, Darwin called the countryside of Downe "the extreme verge of the world"!  The place is interesting to see – it’s rather a pleasant house, in a lovely location, and still wonderfully away from it all considering its proximity to London – but, as so often, fails to convey anything really interesting or useful about its famous inhabitant.  A desk, even the great Darwin’s desk, is just a desk (I know, I’m hopelessly insensitive to atmosphere), and no different because one of the most influential books of all time was written there!  However, I have read much about Darwin and about this house, so I was very pleased to add a layer of detail to my impressions, and the ground floor rooms are attractive and faithful to their arrangement when Darwin was there (upstairs is exhibition space).

  
Out in the garden is another treat for those who can feel the history in stones and gardens (and, yes, a little bit for me too); you can walk down through the kitchen garden to the “sand walk”, a footpath of some 200 yards or perhaps more with the shape of a noose on the end of a rope.  Here Darwin walked for exercise and undisturbed thought; here he pondered on The Origin of Species, and later on his final work, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms. Nowadays, those who follow in his footsteps are unlikely to influence the world in quite so dramatic a way, and very likely to see and hear the planes from nearby Biggin Hill airfield!

The afternoon was pushing on when we had finished at Downe House, so we struck off at a sharp pace down country lanes and then across more fields and pleasant woods, this time in the grounds of Holwood House.  We came across the (now ruined) oak where Wilberforce and Pitt discussed a bill to end the slave trade around 1788, and the formal bench to commemorate their conversation, overlooking attractive Keston Vale.  (The ambition was eventually realised in 1807, postponed because of the Napoleonic Wars).  Down through Fishponds, on to  
West Wickham Common, again notable for oaks and byelaws – see the photograph below -  another bylaw forbids you from disturbing volunteers (militia) at training, or men playing cricket.  Home from Hayes station, in spite of Roy’s determined effort to lead us in the wrong direction at the last.  Best day of the walk so far, and the longest!

 

Wilton's Music Hall

You will remember that I went to hear Fiona Shaw read T S Eliot at Wilton's Music Hall recently - and some of you commented on this little known but rather lovely locale.  Well, a few days ago, reading the London Library Magazine for Winter 2009, I came across a poem, East Ending, by Carol Rumen.  I hope she will forgive me if I share two stanzas with you:

 

We turn the corner into Ensign Street

Where the best brothels were, and the best turns,

And, prettily distressed as Daisy Bell,

She begs our custom - Wilton’s Music Hall.

Her fragile balcony’s a work in progress.

Be careful! She’s fresh bathed and tremulous,

Her tits like pearly scandals and her ankles

Barley sugar.  To restore the old,

Make old just new enough not to disturb

The ghost of Champagne Charley and his girls

Back-stage.  It’s kitsch. So what?  So’s Shakespeare’s Globe.
An audience works the glitz until its gold.

 

Wider yet: Bexley to Petts Wood

On Saturday, on a grey chilly day - but one without rain - Roy and I met at Bexley station, for stage two of the London Loop.  We started off (after a sustaining cup of tea) across rather dead meadows of dank grass of ex-landfill, but with the Cray river not far off.  The Cray was our companion for most of the walk, which was extremely green, and mostly very pleasant - quite a contrast to the post industrial landscapes and waste of our first walk.

We crossed the Cray, and walked upstream (south-west); it was quite surprisingly clear and bright, moving fast over clear gravel beds, though cold and apparently lifeless at this time of year.  This is clearly one of the most popular dog walking places in the area, for we saw dogs in great numbers, mainly large and enormous, all well behaved, carefully picking up their humans' poo after they had defecated, and generally setting an example to the less considerate poodle and pekinese.  Along this stretch, we were accompanied by the raucous screech of numerous ring-necked parakeets, which I liked, but Roy didn't - he would, I think, have them all shot (by the gun dogs, perhaps).  The highlight of this section is Five Arch Bridge, a landscape feature in a now-lost garden (where Elizabethan spymaster Walsingham apparently entertained); the combined bridge and weir creates a small lake, now part of Foots Cray nature reserve and full of wildfowl, including numerous little grebe (or dabchick).

 
Soon after this, we reached Sidcup Place, near St Mary's Hospital, once a large private house, then council offices, now a large pub -at which we restored ourselves with steak and kidney pudding and apple crumble.  The gardens are still there - with a fine flock of redwing - and there is a fine view back down the Cray valley.  However, we now left the valley, and walked through some fine woodland - Park Wood and Petts Wood.  This has a tremendously natural feel to it, and it is feels as if you are right out of London, though the distant noise of major roads intermittently dispels this illusion.  These woods were all saved for nation by public subscription at the end of the nineteenth century and around the First World War.  They are mainly oak at first, with one monstrous specimen that must be four hundred years old - with birch later, and a fine memorial to William Willett, campaigner for summer (or daylight saving) time.  The punning inscription on his sundial reads Non horas numero nisi aestivas (I do not count the hours except in summer).

 
 

 
On such a grey day, it was growing gloomy after four o'clock, so we finished our day by turning off after about 8 miles to Petts Wood station, which we nearly lost, and returning home.

Eliot: Shaw: Wilton's

An unexpected chance on Sunday to go to hear Fiona Shaw reading - or rather, playing - T S Eliot's The Waste Land.  This would not be my favourite interprtetation, being exactly the opposite of Eliot's own approach, that reading should be utterly dispassionate and flat, leaving the meaning to the words alone.  Sadly, Eliot's  own readings, while full of interest merely because he is the author, are a bit dead and even painful - in his slightly censorious, prim yet deep and harsh voice.  Shaw goes to the opposite extreme, investing every line with drama and excitment, and entering fully into every character (here she is reading a section, not from the performance, but with just a hint of her dramatic approach).

I found the reading wonderfully illuminating, and Shaw brings off a remarkable tour de force in merely projecting so much focused and excited energy for so long (about 40 minutes) - and she had to do it three times in all, the evening I went, at three different performances over only about four hours.  She draws attntion to links you might miss on the page, and I learned much - and I speak as someone who once knew the text off by heart himself!  But for me, the page and the printed yext is the thing, and if it is to be read, then Alec Guiness' magisterial reading takes a lot of beating, occasional errors and and all (I can't find a recording, but you could download it here - well worth while).

But Shaw is so brilliant, everything is forgiven her, and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.  The Waste Land always has something new to teach us, and there was plenty on Sunday that was bright and revelatory.

A word about the venue.  I had never heard of Wilton's music hall, an almost demolished relic just east of Tower Bridge.  Saved by enthusiasts, it is lovely but terribly neglected; it is wonderful that some energetic lovers of art and architecture have bent their efforts to its salvation - and may it prosper and revive, with the aid of a little paint and a lot of pluck!

Wider yet - round London again: 1 - Erith to Bexley

A year or so ago, I walked the Capital Ring around London, a kind of inner circle of 78 miles around the city, which I walked in 11 episodes, all recorded on this blog, ending at Richmond in

December 2007.  Two years later, a friend and I are taking on a bigger challenge - the 150 mile London Loop, which we plan to walk regularly, just doing a walk a month.  So the whole thing should take us until about May, June or July 2011! This is the walkers' M25, compared to the Ring, which is the North and South Circular - references which will be obscure to all but Londoners, but the point is that this walk is still within the London boundary, but very much on the outskirts, surprisingly green, very historical, and full of old towns and villages now swallowed by the metropolis, which has surrounded them but not succeeded in stifling their beauty and individuality.

  
 Roy and I started the London Loop at Erith in early December, on the south bank of the Thames at the eastern edge of the modern city, and started off clockwise, heading south and a little east to Bexley for our first outing, a mere 8.5 miles.  It was an unusual day, both very wild and very urban, on the wild edge of marsh and river, and on the edge, too, of even wilder recycling and waste industry on the outermost darkness of the City.  Once embarked on the Thames path, heading east, we gradually came close and closer to the graceful Queen Elizabeth II bridge at Dartford, turning inland along the Darent river just before reaching it.  The Darent is a deep and narrow creek, once the scene of substantial barge traffic, though we walked along at low tide, expanses of glistening mud between reeds and rough grasslands.  Lots of birds around – waders – dunlin, lapwings on the Thames – duck, swan, geese, kestrel and heron on the marsh, and a flock of vivid stonechat along the hedges of the noisiest of breaker’s yards.

 

We soon came to the confluence of the Darent and the Cray, and followed the smaller stream towards Crayford.  This was first reedy, then extremely smelly past a whole series of recycling yards, before we emerged in a rather sad suburbia, following a disconsolate Cray along the neglected backs of terraced houses.  We popped out unexpectedly into a small shopping centre in Crayford round a timid garden, and had an excellent and very cheap lunch at the cafe in the square, where the cheerful waiter told two 50 year old (and a little bit more) that it was “Good on you, lads!” which we found heartening on a number of counts.

Through Crayford on our only stretch of major road, before turning off to rejoin the Cray across playing fields – passing a very modern garage which preserved two columns from the canopy of, I guess, a 1930s cinema – the river now looking more relaxed and less neglected.  We detoured briefly and magically to look at Hall Place, two halves conjoined in an harmonious whole, close to major roads and the outer suburbs, but with a quiet all of its own.  There is a stone gothic house of the 1540s, with a brick seventeenth century wing, of equal size, attached.   The ensemble is pleasing, with pleasant courtyards, formal gardens and wilder ones, and the sense of time blessing what the purist planner or architect might censor.  Roy, still finishing his pamphlet on Tudor brickwork patterns of South London, was particularly delighted.  

Back to the river, skirted the grounds of Hall Place, along by Churchfield Wood, empty and a bit grey by now as the early sun had left us, into Old Bexley, with one or two fine houses, an idiosyncratic church, St Mary’s, with an octagonal cap on its otherwise conventional four-sided spire, and a row of pleasant almshouses.  Just at this point, the transition from the morning’s blazing sunshine was completed by the arrival of heavy rain, just as we caught a train home after nine interesting but not always picturesque miles.

Gymnasium

Last weekend, to one of London’s Olympic venues, the purpose built Gymnasium. It was the home of the German Gymnasium Society, and was arguably the first purpose-built gymnasium in Britain. It was also the location for the first ever National Olympian Games in 1866, and, it is rumoured, will play a role in 2012, though not I'm sure for competition. This is a fine spacious building near St Pancras, built proudly of brick, laid to create dignified and robust patterns, but simply and sparingly, with a high roof built of mighty laminated timbers trussed with steel from the great age of the railways.  It was just another example of London’s unsung architectural richness, quietly sitting down a back way off the Euston Road, overshadowed but not overawed by the new St Pancras International and the bulk of King’s Cross.

Apart from the striking architecture, and very Victorian way in which the industrial feel was combined with at least a modicum of decoration and grace and style, I was very struck by how small the gymnasium is.  Now, it’s a large room, and a fine space, but is a fraction of the size of the modern arena in which the gymnasts do their stuff – and the provision for an audience is negligible.

 

 

Listening to trees

A gorgeous walk in the evening sunshine at Kew on Saturday;  I decided to walk - while staying on the paths - as close to the edge of the gardens as possible.  It took almost an hour and a half, and had the advantage of offering great variety and a glimpse of areas I seldom see.  Kew has a summer festival on at the moment, a celebration of trees, and there are exhibits everywhere.  The highlights are the new "Rhizotron", where you can see and understand roots underground, and the "Xstrata Treetop Walkway", a treetop walkway built on the basis of the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 ... et cetera: if you don't know about this, Dark Puss is even now drafting an iluminating comment, I hope) so that you can see the life of the canopy, including lesser spotted woodpeckers and the purple hairstreak butterfly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most magically for me, was the chance to ‘tune into trees' and experience designer Alex Metcalf's ‘Tree Listening Installation' (until 28 September 2008).  A mighty tree hangs with an odd shaped fruit - headphones, connected to a series of super-sensitive microphones embracing the tree.  You put them on, press a button, and can then listen to the gurglings, bubblings, and poppings of the tree as it transports water up to its leaves, while coping with the physical stresses of its own movement.  Trees can have strokes, and listening to this made the tree leap into life for all the children around me, and for this grown-up.  The installation aims to encourage people to appreciate that trees are not static and that there is more to them than meets the eye - it worked for me. 

If you're anywhere near Kew this year, do go and hear it - though I imagine a new age CD will be out soon!

Avocets!!

Quick dash to Barnes wetland centre this afternoon to see an historic sight - breeding avocets in London.  This lovely bird used to be common in wetland coastal areas, but became (almost) unknown in Britain, though it returned to East Anglia in modest numbers in, I believe, the 1950s.  It's rarity, the hope it held out of reversing wildlife catastrophe, and its charisma all led to it being adopted as the Symbol of the RSPB .

These are not my pictures - the birds were too far away without a howitzer lens - but they show you what you can see in central London today, under the Heathrow flight path!  The wonderful image below comes courtesy of the Abstracts of Nature photoblog.

We have had avocets at Barnes before, when a pair nested a few years ago.  Young hatched, but were eaten by herons.  We wish this pair better luck - they are sitting on a nest with three eggs, and valiantly and noisily defying crows and gulls.

Kew Moore light

You may have seen, some time ago, a couple of posts about Henry Moore at Kew (and another visit), and then a third viewing in the mist.  Henry Moore in the wonderfully relaxed and spacious setting of Kew Gardens really breathes, and allows you to see them uncluttered and to get lots of different views.  On Friday, I was promised a different treat, Moore floodlit at night, with the added bonus of seeing parts of Kew Gardens under these unusual and stimulating conditions.  It was intermittently wet and always cold, but it was still pretty good - in a stoical, stiff upper lip sort of way!

The statues were wonderful - they seemed to jump out of their space at you, and to seem even more intensely physical, and the reflections and highlights created new shapes and new dimensions (alright, Dark Puss, there are only three dimensions in Kew Gardens, but you know what I mean!).  They were, sadly, extremely difficult to photograph without sophisticated equipment and a tripod, so I have only a few hamfisted efforts to show you.  But there were other joys as well - the architecture of the glasshouses, the eerie feeling of going through one of them with chiaroscuro effects in the cacti and the palms, with stats above, and the emphasis lights brought to the shapes and lines of trees and leaves.  Here are a few pictures which might give you some idea - the floodlights came in two colours, a whitish green and a sepia tone, which creates dramatic effects in some places.

Walking round London 11

On the final day of last year, I completed the Capital Ring walk with the excellent company of a friend for the south of the river sections.  We started the last leg at Wimbledon Park tube station on another cold, dank day, and struck off across Wimbledon Park, a busy municipal park originally designed by Capability Brown (can he really have designed everything attributed to him?  Or did he lend his name to a host of pupils and imitators, a profitable franchise?).  Then through streets for half a mile or so, passing the desolate AELT&CC (Wimbledon to you and me - the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club) before entering Putney Heath for six miles uninterrupted green and bosky walking.

Putney Heath was marked by this Christmas tree, still growing and several hundred yards from the nearest house, beautifully decorated.  And further on, there is the famous windmill - though whether it's on Putney Heath or Wimbledon Common is a moot point; they run into each other indistinguishably.

The windmill is apparently an unusual hollow post design, with its own museum: windmill anoraks this way please.  It is, though, a nice feature, and a small plaque tells you that Baden-Powell (Chief Scout of the World) stayed here while writing part of Scouting For Boys.  And just behind the windmill is the London Scottish Golf Club, proudly displaying its yellow shield and red lion.  The club was founded to give Scots in London something to do when their nation gave up rugby.  There is a charming club rule that members must wear a red top while playing; this is so they can be found easily in the thick dark rough when they get lost.   Further on, across a couple of fairways, is Queen's Mere, a favourite haunt of Wombles.

Just after the golf course is a rather fine war memorial, surrounded by trees in an area of public woodland and grassland.  The design is commonplace, but the setting superb.  From there, a brief foray across the A3 and into Richmond Park by the Robin Hood gate.

Richmond is very much home territory for me, but it's a big place - at least 2.5 miles wide and long - and still has some surprises.  First, we stopped for lunch and admired the herds of deer, red and fallow (it's a fallow deer in the picture below), and listened to and watched a group of ring-necked parakeets, Asian birds which have naturalised across the south east of England, and which are new since I have been coming here.  They are spectacularly bright green, with long tails and a piercing screech;  I love them, but that view is not unanimous!  The walk across the Park is superb, almost entirely green and pleasant, especially if you have had the West London ear operation which means you no longer hear the jets coming in, more than one a minute, to Heathrow.   At the heart of the gardens are the Pen Ponds, rich in wildfowl, and extremely cold.

From the Ponds, we turned away from my normal route to the Star & Garter home, and turned past Pembroke Lodge - posh teas, nice views.  Originally this was the mole-catcher's cottage, but has been enlarged and upgraded to the point that members of Earl Russell's family lived there at one time, and the great Bertrand Russell spent his childhood there.  (He was a fine writer, but on the twin assumptions that Principia Mathematica will be beyond all my readers except Dark Puss - it's well beyond me - and that everyone has read A History of Western Philosophy, I've put Sceptical Essays in the list: witty, provocative, and trenchantly written.  Unpopular Essays is just as good). Round the corner of the Lodge for a fine view west, over the Thames valley to Twickers and in better weather to Windsor, and to visit Henry's Mound.  This is a prehistoric barrow, much landscape gardened, from which Henry VIII watched for a signal in 1536 from the Tower of London that Anne Boleyn had met her end.  Now, it is enclosed by a formal holly hedge, pierced so that you can see down an avenue of trees all the way to St Paul's cathedral in the City.

Down through Petersham, a quick and fruitless search for Vancouver's tomb in the churchyard, and out to the mighty Thames.  A mile or so further on, and I was back at my starting point - here I am below, having done the 78 miles, and eager for my tea!

I'm now looking for another modest walking challenge - perhaps the length of Father Thames?

Walking round London 10

Further progress walking around London just before Christmas, on a wintry but brighter day.  We started at Streatham Common and ended up at Wimbledon Park - a short leg of only five and a half miles, but we added a little detour for nostalgic reasons.  We started off at the station, and indeed stayed close to the railway (the Brighton line and suburban services) for a couple of hours.  The first point of interest was the Streatham Pumping Station, built in a Moorish style, and still working.  They knew how to build public buildings in those days!

From there we walked through typical late C19 century south London streets, some in good condition, others a bit more neglected, until we were almost at Tooting Bec common.  Here, we left the route - I hope the Fat Controller who wrote the official guide book will forgive us, 'cos he's very prissy and paternalistic - and went to see Prentis Road where the two of us lived, with a variety of others at different times, some time in 1979-1981.  It was a big middle class house, still there, and looking reasonably much the same - as far as my imperfect memory can recall; it had a dental surgery on the ground floor, grand stairs to a big flat on the first floor (the dentist's mother, I believe), and much meaner stairs to a three bedroom flat at the top in the attics.  It wasn't heaven, but it was the first place in London that I ever called home, so it was quite fun to go and see it.

Then back to Tooting Bec common - named after a French abbey - with a huge outdoor lido, a hundred yards of freezing water where you can, if you should be so minded, see (and participate in) the 2008 World Winter Swimming Championships, in February!  See you there.  Brass monkey swimming aside, it's a large open common with lots of sport pitches and a reasonable amount of woodland and rougher areas for birds etc.  And in the winter sunshine, one could only be grateful to those Victorian pioneers who prevented it being built all over.

Back into suburbia then, and past some striking brick decoration on some of the smarter houses, before arriving at Wandsworth Common, where we stopped for a very welcome cup of tea and cake.  Wandsworth is also a fine area of common, but it's badly chopped into pieces by roads and railway lines.  Leaving the common, we passed the less attractive brickwork of Wandsworth Prison, formerly the Surrey House of Correction, where Oscar Wilde was briefly an inmate (before he more famously was moved to Reading):

"I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by."

Then down to Wimbledon Park, through the long Earlsfield (or Wandsworth) cemetery, well kept and still in use.  Curiously, there is a war cemetery here, exceedingly well maintained and very moving, about 22 very young men dying a long way from home - mainly Australians, but a handful of Canadians too.  I was puzzled as to what this was doing here, but the web provided the answer - the majority of the WW1 casualties buried in the military plots at this cemetery died at the nearby No 3 London General Hospital.  I was touched to find that there are still people, 90 years later, looking after the graves and asking, from Canada or Australia, for information and photographs.

"They shall grow not old,
As we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them."

Finally, across the fast flowing River Wandle, once a famous trout stream, then a sewer for the soap and chemical industries, now clean again and a bit of a nature reserve.  That was pretty much the end of the day's walk - only one leg to go to see Richmond Bridge again!

Moore mist opportunities

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas Day, and are enjoying the feast of St Stephen. These pictures seemed an appropriate offering.

Just before Christmas, to Kew Gardens in a thick mist.  I will let these images speak for themselves, except to say that Kew, for all the winter weather, is always beautiful - and that however well you know it, you would have got lost as I did in these conditions!  Fantastic views of trees and the Moore sculptures, which have a primal, absolute quality in these conditions, utterly dissociated from the world yet hugely of it.  I hope to capture them under snow as well.  The leaf at the end is a sculpture, too, I think.

Walking round London 9

After a long interval, caused by a (mild) leg injury and a long holiday, I got around to continuing my Capital Ring walk round London ten days or so ago.  It was the 8 mile stretch from New Beckenham to Streatham Common - and it was a marked contrast to earlier walks, with a much shorter, darker day, cold and wet.  But it nevertheless was of real interest, though a quick glance at the map seemed to offer a lot of street walking.

Out of the station, past a house almost completely obscured by Christmas decorations, including snow and a sleigh on the roof!  Past, too, the site of Kent House, a 13th century farm which was the first building in Kent on this road leaving London - and which, tragically and unbelievably, was only demolished in 1957.  Then into Crystal Palace Park for a welcome cup of soup and a walk round the bizarre 19th century dinosaur models, a piece of earnest education in something akin to a theme park.  Also, among the dinosaurs are a couple of massive elk - deer only made extinct 11,000 years ago, whose antlers - re-grown each year - sometimes reached 12 feet across.  Wouldn't care to meet one of these in a bad mood in the New Forest.

Then up through the park to the gigantic terraces which housed the Crystal Palace itself, moved here from Hyde Park in 1854 but burned down in 1936.  Little remains except the imposing terraces, and a few token items, including a number of curious statues and sphinxes - impressive at a distance, but close up, it's clear that they're just hollow concrete over iron frames in bad repair.

From Crystal Palace, a zig-zag route across to Streatham, through Biggin Wood, a thin but pleasant green strip, and past Dickens Wood Close, the site of a house where Charles Dickens stayed, and where he set David Copperfield's meeting with Dora Spenlow.  Then across Norwood Park.  This is a lovely, unsung park, with a house built in the 1840s for Arthur Andersen, founder of the P&O shipping company and MP for the Orkneys.  It's in public ownership now, but still with pleasant gardens and well maintained on the outside at least.  My walking companion, a south Londoner for thirty years, had no idea of its existence - and that's been one of the charms of this walk, finding these unknown beauties.

Finally, into Streatham Common and another unknown, the formal Rookery gardens tumbling down the gentle slope with fine views over London to the North Downs.

Library Book

I recently bought, from the London Library, a small book by Tony McIntyre, one of the trustees, simply called Library Book.  It's about the architecture and history of the London Library, and it's a little gem.  If you know the Library, it's an added layer of interest and pleasure in what is clearly a magnificent but slightly eccentric institution; if you don't, it's still full of both architectural and bibliophilic anecdotes.

The library is a million volumes strong, almost all of which can be borrowed and taken home - and unless another members requests one of your books, they are very generous about loan times.  The present institution, a veritable architectural palimpsest in the corner of St James' Square, has grown steadily since it was founded by Thomas Carlyle in 1841.  Past Presidents have included Carlyle himself, Tennyson, H A L Fisher, and Lord Clark; the current incumbent is Tom Stoppard.  The library is very old-fashioned in some ways - comfortable reading room, plumbing which has a heavy vitreous quality which exhorts you to remember the great days of Empire, cast iron book stacks, and a classification system which owes nothing to Mr Dewey.  But the collection grows steadily - 8,000 volumes are added every year - and the catalogue is computerised and efficient.  The Library throws nothing away, which means they often have books you cannot find anywhere else, but also that an aimless bummel along the stacks can lead to wonderful serendipities.

McIntyre's anecdotes include Arthur Ransome - yes, he of Swallows and Amazons - using an angry letter from the librarian on impressive headed paper to get past intransigent officials in St Petersburg (where he was writing for the Manchester Guardian), and the redoubtable Mr Cox on the front desk, treating all comers with Cockney equality - finishing a discussion with one member after saying to an importunate member, "One moment, if you please, Miss Sitwell.."!

Writing this, another library came to mind, a fictional one from Michael Innes' Secret Vanguard, Dr Borer's Library in Mecklenberg Square, where the librarian Tufton has "a great deal of work on hand since Dr Borer died".  Only slowly do you find out that this sad event occurred in 1877, and Tufton is still editing his journals and correspondence in 1939!  The stairs are so crammed with piles of books that visitors "would have been the better for a chart"; and Tufton, on hearing of the death of a modern poet remarks "Dear, dear.  The poets are all departing from us.  Meredith gone, and that fat fellow Rossetti, and now this lad Ploss."  As Ploss himself remarks in his diary (found after his death, a vital clue), what a blessing to be led to this haven.

Chiswick House: seeing the house for the trees

I explained in a recent post that I had been round Chiswick House gardens to hear more about their planned restoration.  Some of the main features, although they may not mean a lot to people who don’t know the garden, are worth more discussion.  They illustrate very effectively the challenges and compromises which have to be faced in a project of this sort – with a complex house and garden history, limited funds, and extensive public access.

The main changes fall into five main categories – improving the views of the house, restoring the goose’s foot, reconfiguring the lawns and walks at the rear of the house, and providing good access features.  In addition, there is a certain amount of work, mainly removing or lopping trees, for health and safety reasons – which I am always a bit sceptical about, but that this is a real issue was highlighted by a major fall from a cedar of Lebanon over the summer (though there was no sign of any weakness, so it does raise the question of whether the real risks can be identified satisfactorily).

·        On this 60 acre site, there is an extensive belt of woodland, which is pretty overgrown and wild in a Wind in the Willows sense. But it’s not all in good condition, with a lot of straggly young trees not growing well, and a real lack of ground cover, brambles and spring flowers and the like, which is a real shame for insects, birds and flora.  There is also concern that rain runs off the compacted earth and is not easily absorbed by the soil and trees.  So the plan envisages some removal of trees to create space and light – there are no browsing animals such as deer in the gardens, so this doesn’t happen  naturally – and coppicing of a percentage of trees, typically hazel, on a long (20 year) cycle.  The woods will also be mulched in some areas, so the overall effect should be to lessen footfall and encourage more ecological variety.

·        There are two views of the house which the plan aims to restore – one from the western side from near the cascade, and one from the north west, from the so called Fulham oak, along an open grove between trees to the corner of the house across the north west lawn.  The first of these views is, in my view, nothing very special and I think it a shame to chop down good trees to reveal it; there are a number of fine, large specimen trees along this line, but they are to be kept – what are planned for removal are three 10-20 year old trees which will gradually obscure the view more and more over coming years.  It seems a shame to me, but they are not wonderful mature standards, and I am not inclined to chain myself to any of these!  The other view, across open glades and the lake, would be very fine but is completely obscured at present.  It can be reopened by removing some willow scrub but keeping most of the large lakeside trees intact.  This seems a real gain, and will also maintain the lake margin as a small wetland area, which if not dealt with, will dry out.

·        On the north side of the house is a feature called the patte d'oie (goose's foot), which actually pre-dates the house by some years.  Here three paths (now four, with a later addition) splay out from a central point to give distant views of architectural features at the ends of lines of dark yew hedges – an obelisk, a gateway, a small temple folly.  Here, the tarmac paths will be replaced with hogging, the yew will be trimmed to be shorter and in one case realigned to the original line, and a mass of scrubby holly will be removed.  All this seems very sensible.

·        Around the lawns, grove and paths at rear of house, there are some real improvements planned, and some changes about which I am much less convinced.  Two rows of Italian poplars, full of poor specimens and indeed gaps, will be taken out and replaced with matching specimens of the same species. The grove area will be largely cleared of trees which do not match the original plan, and the grove formally replanted with lime (not pry, sadly, but a hybrid).  This is not really my taste in garden planting, but it was Burlington’s own plan, so cannot be charged with being inauthentic.  On the lawn, the mighty cedars of Lebanon will be retained, the odd Atlantic cedar which looks quite out of place will be removed, and a number of other small and medium trees removed to give a more open effect down to the lake.  I am very happy with the Atlantic cedar’s removal – it’s an eyesore – but I would argue for a slightly more tree'd lawn than is planned.  Oddly, two terrible oaks, gaunt and damaged, near the house have been reprieved.

·        Finally, the restoration will open up walled gardens currently closed off to the public, and will provide a much improved cafe and toilets, which is important in such a heavily used and significant site; these will be built where there have been service buildings in the past, so no historic garden will be lost.

Overall, I think the scheme will represent a real improvement in the grounds, and while I have concerns over some individual trees, I look forward to someone taking decent care of the gardens for the first time in many years.

Chiswick House: Woodman, spare that tree!

There has been a great deal of anxiety and even outrage in my local area recently about plans for the restoration of the gardens around Chiswick House.  Correspondence in the Evening Standard and The Times, no less, has centred on the need to remove over 400 trees from the gardens – for a variety of reasons – and the faithfulness of the plan’s developers’ ambitions to recreate an authentic garden of the period of the house.  Chiswick House, as essentially the first Palladian building in Britain, is of national importance, and the plans for the garden are therefore receiving a lot of attention. (There’s a fine model of it in the British Galleries at the Victoria & Albert Museum).

A lot of issues get tangled up here: most obviously, what is sympathetic restoration, what is pragmatic for today?  Trees grow, people’s tastes develop, and the environment changes.  The owner builder of the house inherited well established gardens, which he developed as he saw fit; and he and his principal gardeners would have changed their minds as things developed, would have had to make maintenance decisions as trees grew or died, et cetera.  They would have had visitors, but would not have needed to worry about mass public use of the garden, about vehicle noise, or artificial light at night (bad for bats).  So we don’t know what the garden would have looked like if they’d still been here to supervise – we can only make intelligent guesses (and Burlington certainly changed the gardens radically at least once himself).

The second difficult issue is at which authenticity should we aim?  The current building is from 1726, but there was a Jacobean house on the site before that; and the most striking features of the garden – the lake and the patte d'oie (goose’s foot) of yew-lined paths – are not exactly contemporary.  The lake was originally a pair of formal pools, and the goose's foot predates the house.  Later still, the Victorians made alterations, and in more modern times, there has been local change here and there to accommodate car parks, cafes, and the like.  There is no one original to which we should return, even if we could.

So I was fascinated to have the chance to go round the garden last Sunday with Fiona Crumley, the recently appointed head gardener, who took a good two hours explaining the main features of the proposed work, and the rationale for it.  I left, not agreeing with everything in the plan, but certainly convinced that the restoration had been approached in a cool and careful way, with a genuine attempt to reconcile conflicting interests.  Not everyone will agree with me, and certainly not everyone agrees with the plans, but my concerns were considerably abated.

However, I think everyone will agree that the gardens urgently need some loving care and attention.  They’re worn out and in parts neglected, the woodland is overgrown and lacks ground cover, some of the trees are in poor condition or even missing from formal patterns.  And the cafe and the toilets are a disgrace.  The park is essentially a public park, for all its historic importance, squashed between the A4 and the A416, and it has suffered from that.  But even within these constraints, much could be done.  A later post will outline some of the proposals, and discuss the pros and cons.

First, catch your bird!

As you know, I occasionally volunteer at Barnes wetland centre.  This past week, I have been in twice: once to conduct a tour, which was fun, and fortunately the audience asked no really difficult questions; and the other time to help, with many others, with the twice yearly bird catch.

This is a regular event, in order to give all the captive birds - over 200 of them - a health check and any necessary treatment.  Now this is a wetland reserve, and although they are captive, these are not tame birds, so you have to get in the ponds and mud with them - and if water and mud is the worst you get on you during the day, you can be jolly glad.  But it's good to think the birds are so well cared for, and it's very nice to see the birds up close and get a wonderful view of their colours and forms.  A great deal of trouble is taken, of course, not to stress the birds any more than necessary, and they're all returned to their watery homes within 20 minutes or so.

Below, a black swan is put in its travelling jacket and carried off to the vets - your friendly blogger is deep in the mire, and about to get deeper - and a few of the birds, calm and relaxed again back on their own patch (these are a pair of Carolina duck and red-billed whistling ducks).  The pictures are not great, but wielding a camera when often waist deep in water and mud, carrying a large net and often with handful of duck, goose or even swan, is not easy!

More Moore at Kew

A few more photographs, following on from yesterday's post.  Do you think there is something of Darth Vader in the first picture?  Certainly the sunflowers are turning away in fear.

Kew: Moore and more

At the weekend, to Kew Gardens to see the start of the six month Henry Moore exhibition.  It's a wonderful conception, and very impressive, with these mighty sculptures scattered lightly around Kew, in natural and man made settings.  The sculptures aren't always my favourites, but this was a lovely way to see them, and to walk round Kew is always very fine.  There were, sadly, lots of children climbing on the Moores, in spite of prohibitory notices, and it might be easier to see them properly when the initial excitement has worn off and the weather gets colder!

But here (and more tomorrow) are a few photographs of Henry Moore at Kew, with a couple of the horticultural delights as well.  Well worth a visit, for sculpture or plants.

We are amused

Off to the Victoria and Albert Museum today; this is always a surprise for me, as it is lodged in my mind from childhood as an old fashioned, fusty museum for experts and grey bores only.  Nothing could be further from the truth - as the V&A has developed over recent years, it has added a whole range of excellent galleries, and the layout is sophisticated and modern.

We spent time looking at the "new" British galleries (they're about 5 years old, I guess).  These are wonderful, with lots of fine artefacts of all kinds, from Henry VII to Charles Rennie Mackintosh, superbly laid out.  And there are increasingly things to do - facsimiles of the books to look at and handle, short but interesting films (eg, on bookbinding, building the Crystal Palace, and hand printing William Morris wallpapers), as well as practical things such as designing a bookplate or a coat of arms, and a remarkably heavy Inverness Cape to try on - I rather fancied it, but luckily the photographs have been destroyed.  This child of 50 designed a coat of arms (appointing himself merely a gentleman, eschewing higher honours available) and choosing martlets, the footless birds of heraldry (they appear on the arms of Sussex) and an appropriate motto, neither desire nor fear:

Also very interesting was the superb long gallery of ironwork, strong and graceful at the same time.  It made me think of Hal o' the Draft in The Wrong Thing  (Kipling, Rewards and Fairies - more here). Hal has done a piece of work for the king, which is all decoration and frippery and foolishness, and his master, Torrigiano, sets him "to draft out a pair of iron gates .. a week at that settled my stomach handsomely, and I put the work through the smithy, where I sweated more of my foolish pride".  He says that "iron's sweet stuff if you don't torture her, and hammered work is all pure, truthful line, with a reason and a support for every curve and bar of it" - and this superb gallery is wonderful evidence of that.

Finally, on our way out, we saw a Chinese procession, complete with cymbals, drums and dragons for the festival of the largest full moon, which apparently falls on Tuesday next!

Walking round London 8

On Sunday, another section of the Capital Ring walk, from Eltham to Beckenham, about 6.5 miles.  It looked on the map as if, with the exception of Beckenham Place Park, it might be quite built up, but appearances are deceptive.  On the outskirts of Mottingham, we found this blue plaque, and my companion, a great cricket watcher, was outspoken on what WG would have thought of the current fad for 20 overs cricket at international level.  And we passed Eltham College, where Eric Liddell (Chariots of Fire) was educated.  Literary connections were soon added to sporting as we passed down a scrubby passage between a modern block of flats and some rough gardens, named "Railway Children Way" to commemorate Edith Nesbitt, author of The Railway Children.

Fine architecture was another theme of the walk, with this splendid Victorian mansion near the start of the walk, and a fine ironworked porch at the other.  But most of the walk was through small areas of green, nature reserves, a cemetery, spacious greens in inter-war housing, and alongside rivers like the Quaggy and the Ravensbourne.  And, a great surprise, a mile long green corridor called Downham Woodland Walk.  Barely 10 yards wide, this ran between two streets of houses for no apparent reason, and was full of lovely old oak trees, allegedly remnants of the ancient forest of which Oxleas was also part.

From there we entered Beckenham Place Park, a very large park with a house built in the 1770s, but which passed into public ownership in the last century.  It's now somewhat neglected, but we were let in to admire the ground floor rooms, where the decoration is typical but flat and heavy, and in need of a little tender loving care.  Nevertheless, the building is a fine imposing presence over the park, and its surroundings are still attractive and very green, though there is now a golf course (and a bar) as well as the formal gardens and the ancient woods. As the crest over the portico says, nothing is achieved with effort, and its about time someone made some with this fine house.

The final stretch of the walk took us past a Kent County Cricket Club ground, the Crystal Palace training pitch, and some fine Victorian  houses, before we caught a train at New Beckenham.  It will be some weeks before I can resume this route, but ahead stretch the old haunts of south London and the great green spaces of the west.

A world of ducks

On Saturday, I spent a full day at the Barnes wetland centre, greeting visitors and answering queries, and patrolling the hides and the childrens' playground.  Translated, this means I spent all day wandering round in the sunshine, talking about one of my major hobbies, and getting excellent views of  kingfishers, snipe, and a host of duck of many species, the very beginning of the move off their breeding grounds.  The first picture is a hunting heron, with a small fish in its beak, but I also made a special effort to visit the collection of foreign wildfowl.  Here are a few of the most engaging.

From top to bottom, they are the Coscoroba Swan from South America, Red-breasted geese from northern Europe, a White-headed duck from southern Europe, and a Black-bellied whistling duck from North America - and yes, it does whistle!  I will be getting much closer than this is a couple of weeks - but I'll save that for another post.

Walking Round London 7

South of the river now, and not walking alone, but with a companion knowledgeable in the area, having lived in south-east London for almost 30 years - and at the weekend, we walked from Woolwich to Mottingham.  We started off at Woolwich Arsenal, walking through the site, once a major munitions works, and now a residential complex with a good number of old buildings and a museum preserved - and some very odd iron people sculptures, which to my eye look some way after Anthony Gormley of Angel of the North fame.  Then along the river, admiring old graving docks given over to flowers and fishing, and to the increasingly imposing presence of the Thames Barrier.

Then inland, and southwards through a string of small connected parks in Charlton, complete with children's zoo.  Then round to Charlton House, a magnificent Jacobean house much neglected by Londoners, but a real little gem worth a visit if you care for that sort of thing.  Then across Woolwich Common, where the army used to camp before embarking  in the Thames for foreign wars, collecting it's weapons at Woolwich Arsenal as they did so.  The common is very rough, and an excellent mixture of rough grass, scrub and trees, before we emerged on the third military site, "The Shop", as officers called the training academy which preceded Sandhurst - also about to become rather smart houses, on a Victorian site where the brickwork is reminiscent of Tudor architecture.

After the common, a wonderful couple of miles through a series of lovely woods, including Severndroog Castle - the highest point on this walk at 404 feet, with extensive views southwards - and Oxleas woods itself, genuine ancient woodland in the heart of London.  Magic - but almost disappeared beneath the road-builder's bulldozers a few years ago.  The woods are wonderful - mighty trees, lovely views of the North Downs (and a cafe from which to enjoy them), and a fine example of one of my common themes: trees are immortal - two trees blown over by the wind, their rootplates entirely pulled out of the ground, and both growing upwards from the top of the recumbent trunks, all while young children use them as swings and climbing frames.

From Oxleas onwards, through Eltham Park across the horrible A2 to Falconwood.  This was meant to be the end of our walk, but it was a fine evening and the lure of Eltham Palace was too great.  So we carried on across various parklands till we reached it, a lovely late Tudor palace, with some fine decoration and a lovely bridge over the moat (and a fine art deco house next door!).  We didn't venture in, but skirted the park, enjoying yet more views over fields to central London, many landmarks in the City and West End visible, before reaching Mottingham, after 10 miles lovely walking, green and open, with some fine architecture to boot.

Walking round London 6

My final day north of the Thames, and I went to West Ham in really hot weather, to resume my walk along the Great Drain, Bazalgette's amazing sewage system, which is now dignified by the name "Greenway".  Altogether I did 6 miles, ending up crossing the river at Woolwich, and if I'm honest, it was one of the least interesting days on this walk so far.  The Greenway is a tarmac path with grass verges, giving a very distant view of the City, but there is little of interest to see.  Then you get into a perfectly pleasant but unexceptional park, until you eventually find yourself on the north side of Albert Dock, where the interest revives.  To the left are the accommodation buildings on the University of East London campus at Cyprus.

On next to the river itself, and a choice of crossing the river by foot tunnel or ferry.  I chose the ferry (or "fairy" as my mother tells me I used to say when very little), although the entrance to the tunnel is a fine piece of Victorian architecture, with a very reassuring sign outside, telling me how far I have come since Richmond.

Then across the river, with views up and down the river - the new towers of Thamesmead downstream on the south bank over by the Arsenal, and the Dome, Canary Wharf and the Thames Barrier upstream.

I can now look forward to the green spaces and historic buildings of south of the river, likely to be quite a contrast with the last two walks, and much more like the early stages from Richmond northwards.

Walking Round London 5

A half-day's leave last week, and a nine mile walk in the sunshine from Finsbury Park to West Ham - leaving North London, and entering Docklands, with the smell of the Thames ever nearer.

I started at Manor House, and after a short walk through the park, joined the New River, which I followed on a great loop for over a mile, ending up passing the two reservoirs which the river (really a carefully engineered canal) has supplied since 1613, and finishing by The Castle.  The Castle is an extraordinarily fanciful building, now a climbing centre, but originally a water company pump house.

Only five miles from central London, and you can see the space and the greenery that the New River and the reservoirs generate.  The river itself is clean as far as the water goes, but there's quite a lot of rubbish - the flow is very steady, it only drops 2 inches every mile, and there are frequent run-offs for excess water.  So there's little flushing action (a metaphor that become relevant later), and the steep banks put off bird life.  So this seems a pleasant artery, but it's a little neglected by even those nearby, I suspect. 

Above, The Castle with a heron on guard, and below, the brass insignia of the original owner of this architectural fantasy.  They were proud of public works in those days, although many of the public works were private.

Through Clissold Park into Stoke Newington, less than four miles from Charing Cross, the closest this walk gets.  The High Street is notable for its Defoe pub, as the author of Robinson Crusoe took refuge here (maybe, I think, because he was a Dissenter of some sort, and was excluded, either legally or socially, from London itself).  Robinson Crusoe is based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk, but lacks any kind of verisimilitude, though it's a jolly good yarn for pre-teenage and teenage boys.  There is an amusing and informative essay about this (Why the "Single Print of a Foot"?) in John Sutherland's Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?, which I thoroughly recommend to all interested in nineteenth century English literature - short essays about mistakes, difficulties and irrelevancies in literature, which will enlighten and entertain you, and make you realise that you don't read the texts as closely as you think you do! (As a reward for reading about Defoe, you can read the next essay, and find out where Fanny Hill kept her contraceptives - essential literary knowledge.)

On into the cemetery in Stoke Newington, a slightly wild area of trees, graves and sun, featuring the founder of the Salvation Army, "General" Booth, and Issac Watts (When I survey the Wondrous Cross), and many others.  Note how confident they were of Booth's destination after death!

Leaving Stoke Newington, I passed a mosque converted from a row of Edwardian terraced houses, then headed through Springfield Park, being used for filming, with the odd effect that a First World War army officer and his lady were reading The Times of 2007 surrounded by children and mothers playing.  Then out into Walthamstow Marshes, and a long stretch of wide greenery, built up on the western side, but expansive across march and meadow right across the Lea valley. 

A couple of miles of this, then into the world of the urban canal, with warehouses and locks - at Old Ford Locks, where I swung east, round the corner of the Olympic Park (nothing there yet, but much

promise, and a lot of bright blue fence). I walked along the Greenway, a path a few feet above the scrapyards and waste of east London, conscious that I was walking on top of the world's largest sewage pipe, a monstrous cloaca leading to yet another pumping station, the Byzantine Abbey Mills, above, which did over a hundred years sterling service in clearing London of its waste. (I am indebted to Anne and Dave for the photograph, as my own were unusable - I hope they don't mind, but I couldn't ask as there is no contact point on their posting.  But there are lots of great pix, so visit if you'd like to see more of this Victorian engineering masterpiece).

I ended with a short walk to West Ham station and a tube home, right across London.  Next week, the final leg north of the Thames, as I head for Woolwich.

Walking round London 4

Last weekend, I went off in glorious sunshine to do the fourth leg of the Capital Ring, from Hendon Central to Finsbury Park - this is not exactly what the book recommends, but it was convenient for me for transport.  It was a very warm seven miles, and contained some of the most marvellous sections I have encountered so far, and also the worst - though that was mercifully short.  I started off in Hendon Park, and then worked my way along the North Circular for about 150 yards - probably the low point of the entire circuit!  But then along the River Brent, past disused duck decoy pools, and then through the elegant spaciousness of Hampstead Garden Suburb.

Then on to East Finchley, across a small public wood and park, and out into more posh suburbia - and the first time I've ever seen branded paving stones!

Then the real joy of the day began, with a whole succession of wonderful places, many of them probably only locally known.  First, into Highgate Wood, with its very smart gates (below) and then into the adjoining Queen's Wood, just north of Highgate station - a walk of over a mile in the two woods.  Highgate Woods boasts a working water fountain, with taps for men, and different height troughs for horses and dogs, complete with an unreadable quotation from Coleridge's Inscription for a Fountain on a Heath, not really one of his master works.  These are both very fine woods, well kept but with a natural feel to them, and both justly famous for their spring flowers, though these of course were long gone in early August.  But the sun through the trees was reward enough, and I admired the wonderful patterns of light and dark, of brilliant almost translucent green leaves with dark moody masses of trunk or felled wood.  Below the gate is a close up of beech bark: a fine delicate texture compared with many British trees.

Out of the woods at Highgate, and a quick view down (south)the A1 into London.  It was meant to be in a tunnel here, but it collapsed during construction, and was eventually bridged by the graceful and eponymous Archway.

Quickly off the road again, onto a two mile or more stretch of abandoned railway, now a path and nature reserve.  It was originally part of a line from Finsbury Park to Edgeware, and conversion to be a branch of the Northern Line was halted by the Second World War.  The line closed in 1954, and since then, the trees have grown high - and it's a mature, completely hidden ribbon of nature reserve across a swathe of north London  - you might live two streets from it and not know.  The people below are at Stroud Green station near Crouch End, but are, I trust, not waiting for a train.

Bursting out of the railway path into Finsbury Park, I was gratified to find myself only 15 miles from Woolwich - where I stop going east and turn homewards (indirectly) again, and a satisfying 28 miles from my starting point in Richmond.

I went home from Manor House tube; these smart eaves opposite Finsbury Park explain why architects say you should walk "looking upwards".

Walking round London 3

A vigorous seven mile walk on Saturday, the next stage of my walk round London.  I'd planned to do more, and planned it for the Sunday, but fears of Noye's Fludde made me change the day.  Started off in a railway station, South Kenton, and walked for about a mile and a half through residential areas, all of them with concreted front gardens for their cars, most dispiriting.  But then, into Fryent Country Park, starting with the ascent of 282 foot Barn Hill, up through pleasant woods to the summit pond and a very close view of the new Wembley stadium - and a very distant one of Canary Wharf, which gives a measure of the walking still to do before I turn westwards again.  The pond was covered in small yellow lilies, and there were a lot of different dragonflies about.

Down from the hill, and into open meadows, and a second smaller summit, with extensive views to the north and west, where I could plainly see Harrow-on-the-Hill. The meadows were home to a lot of kestrels, and I could admire their plunging hunting, and their lovely hovering and swooping, but this photograph was the best I could manage.

As I left the meadows, I cam into Kingsbury, where I passed the "new St Andrew's" church - actually built in 1847 in Marylebone and transported here, stone by stone, in 1931 - where it is next to "old St Andrew's".  Musing on this,  I made my way out to the end of the Brent Reservoir.  Like Barn Hill, this was completely unknown to a west Londoner like me, and is really rather attractive.  It is over a mile long, and was once a major London tourist attraction in its own right, with its own railway station and pub (The Welsh Harp) - and in 1948, the Olympic rowing was held here.  Now its a pleasant lake for sailing, a bird reserve, flower meadows and of course, a reservoir - a large expanse of water formed by damming the tiny Brent river. 

In the meadows of Fryent, and around, Brent, summer is in full blast, but the harbingers of autumn are already here, blackberries,  horse-chestnuts, rowan, and sloe. 

 

When I left the Brent reservoir, and entered Hendon, I noticed two buildings on the first shopping street I came to - one had very rough worn brickwork, not unattractive, with tiled decorations, high up above the fourth floor.  And the other was an an ethnic restaurant, still relatively unusual in London, designed to make me feel at home (although the welcome was dampened by the fact that it was shut!).

Bookish references on this walk were limited, so I allowed the charming woods of Barn Hill to inspire me to share The Way Through The Woods and The Woods of Westermain with you.  The first of these is a lovely description of how the woods roll back over a road when the traffic ceases:

THEY shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again;

This is Kipling at his gentlest; for a more deliberate, more brutal version of similar events, see Letting in the Jungle in Jungle Books.  The second, one of Meredith's most beautiful poems, is a romantic vision, and a challenge.  It's long, full of lovely words (a yaffle is a green woodpecker, for example), but the opening stanza will give you the mood:

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

Lords of Creation

Yesterday to Lord's to enjoy a wonderful day's cricket, with England batting most of the day against India - building a winning position which at the time of writing looks to be in vain, as rain and bad light are preventing the coup de grace.  But yesterday was good cricket and good weather, and I enjoyed being there for its own sake.

The archetypal literary cricketing match is, of course, in A G MacDonnell's "England, Their England" a wonderfully funny book which is well worth reading, and not just for the cricket chapter.  And you don't need to be a cricket lover to enjoy it, any more than you need to be a golfer to enjoy P G Wodehouse's golfing stories.

Yesterday, Lord's was pretty full - but Finbow prefers it empty:  "'Why are we going to Lord's?' I asked. 'There's no match on.' 'We're going to Lord's because there's no match on', he replied. 'Since cricket became brighter, a man of taste can only go to an empty ground, and regret the past."  Complete nonsense, of course, but fun.  Finbow is a central character in C P Snow's Death Under Sail, an early work, but a pleasant murder mystery.  He went on, a maturer writer, to produce the great 11 novel sequence Strangers and Brothers, which apart from its intrinsic merits, gave us the phrase 'corridors of power'.  Snow returned to the murder mystery later in life with A Coat of Varnish, which is a little masterpiece and a real collector's item.  Note to Harriet D - you'll enjoy this if you don't know it, any lover of Innes will appreciate the writing and the mystery.

Finally, there's an excellent cricket match, too, in Dorothy Sayer's Murder Must Advertise, in which Lord Peter Wimsey is trying to be someone else and play a boring, quiet game - but he loses his cool when hit on the funny bone, and smites the bowing to all four quarters to win the match for the agency where he is working undercover.

Sunny wet day

I've spent the morning at the London wetland centre at Barnes again, and we had a pretty sunny morning; knowing that the rest of the country is under several feet of water, I thought some more cheerful pictures might be welcome!  Above, reedmace (not bulrush, please, although I gather some botanists have given way to the popular error).  And below, a family of mallard sport on a flooded lawn, and a Heathrow-bound jet is reflected in one of the deeper pools.

There's a lot in flower at the moment, and I have chosen some water lilies, and great drifts of a white flower I think may be a veronica, looking almost wintry in fierce silhouette against the sunlight.  And on the same flowers, a peacock butterfly, a dark shape in the centre, and a closer version - not a very good photograph but such a lovely thing that I could not leave it out.

Walking round London 2

Today, I continued the circumambulation of London which I started last week - and did a mile and a half of last week's walk again in order to save too many bus changes and main roads.  As you can see, the route did not start in rural bliss, but the shopping centres were soon left behind, and within half a mile I was in flower meadows and walking along the Grand Union canal again - the Paddington branch this time.  Less of a sense of remoteness than last week, but still very green and remarkably quiet. Lots and lots of flowers, and some wildlife, like the terrapin, which shouldn't be there at all.

But this flat start was not maintained, for although we dwellers near the Thames forget it, there are hills in London, mainly in the north.  The two I 'climbed' today were Horsenden Hill, and Harrow. The school and village feel of Harrow is well known, but Horsenden was was a baby revelation to me.  Its about 280 feet, and while it would be an exaggeration to say I noticed the increasing cold and lack of oxygen, it did give excellent views to the west and towards central London.  Joking about the harsh climate of such great heights puts me in mind of G K Chesterton's wonderful fantasy, The Napoleon of Notting Hill - in which King Auberon designs warm robes for the snow bound land of North Kensington, and a thousand other delightful absurdities.  It's short, but it's perfect, especially for anyone who knows the western half of London.  But back to Horsenden Hill, with some views and a glance at the delightful oak woods.

The Post Office Tower is just visible in the centre of the horizon.

From Horsenden, I worked my way up to Harrow on the Hill, by way of Piggy Lane, a gloomy green lane in which I found a cuckoo pint - or lords and ladies - arum maculatum. This has lots of popular names which are pretty rude, and many imaginative ones which are not - often based on the flower, with its distinctive spathe and spadix, rather than the berries that I can show you.  "Willy lily" is a fine name I learned from Flora Britannica only today!

On through Harrow, which Churchill famously entered on the basis of writing his name, the numer 1, and a full stop on the examination paper.  Churchill is such a huge figure in British modern history, that we forget his fitful career - and Rhodes James' fine book, Churchill: A Study in Failure is an excellent account of the wilderness years before 1939.

Across Harrow's playing fields, and to South Kenton station through a golf course, where I noticed mature pods on the broom already.  Although it is not at all in the modern taste, broom always makes me think of A Runnable Stag by John Davidson, a nineteenth century poet who was in my school anthology. 

He sets the time of year for a stag hunt in Devon with these lovely lines:

"When the pods went pop
on the broom, green broom
And apples began to
be golden-skinned.."

The rest of the poem is here.

My seven and a half miles complete,  home by Tube, just making it before a tremendous thunderstorm which has cleared the air wonderfully.

Walking round London 1

  On an impulse, I bought a book about the Capital Ring, literally a walk around London, about 6 to 10 miles from the centre, and I started doing it today.  I chose to begin at Richmond, as being convenient - those of you who can add (Dark Puss has special skills in this department, I feel sure) will see that the whole walk is some 78 miles - plus, I guess, another 10 or so getting to and from the route to public transport over the many stages.

I'm going clockwise, and I hope to complete the route in seven or eight goes over the summer and autumn, visiting familar and unknown London in the process.  Watch for further instalments!

I followed the Thames downstream briefly, then crossed over on the bridge at Richmond Lock.  This took me to Isleworth, where after gleefully using a right of way through the Town Wharf pub's balcony, I came to the church, where a modern body sits unhappily against the fourteenth century tower - the original church had long been replaced by an eighteenth century building, but this was destroyed in 1944, by vandalism, not enemy action.

From Isleworth, through the grounds of Syon Park, where I caught excellent views of a kestrel on the floodlights, and admired the Great Conservatory.

From Syon, you follow the river Brent (as in Brentford) and the Junction canal roughly northwards, and when the Grand Union canal joins, you veer off east along the Brent.  This is a revelation - amazingly wild and green, yet I walked under the A4 (the Great West Road), the M4, the Piccadilly Line and the main line railway viaduct to the west.  And in these circumstances, I saw heron, coot, swan, and other ducks in abundance.  And smart new waterside development have replaced the dirty, derelict warehouses at Brentford Lock itself, bringing life and sparkle.

Below (I hope - sometimes, I'm not in perfect control of where my pictures end up!) is a reflection of clouds in the GlaxoSmithKline building in Brentford, and the lowest of the Hanwell locks.

Finally, the route crosses more wooded and open land, including two golf courses, and ends in Greenford, whence I caught a train home - with fine views of Gilbert Scott's early church, St Mary's in Hanwell, proud and a little bit vulgar, and also of the Wembley arch in the distance, and lots of waterside flowers.  Altogether, a good nine miles of wonderful urban walking in glorious sunshine.

And the bookish connections I promise?  Well, walking by the Thames put me in mind of Jerome K Jerome's masterpieces, Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel.  I also recall that in The Innocence of Father Brown, the accused in one of the stories (Hammer of God) gives as an alibi that he was in the Revival Mission in Greenford ("which sits all night, we save souls so fast"), where I finished today. 

Now all I need is the energy for the other 70 or so miles!

Sepia views in a Palladian garden

  Over the weekend, I visited Britain's first Palladian building, Chiswick House in West London. I shall return in future to this little gem, but today I wanted to share some sepia pictures I took in the gardens, which I think capture a mood very well. 

Designed in the 1720s, it replaced a Jacobean manor house on the site, and was the brainchild of the third Earl of Burlington, designed and built by architect William Kent.  It's of huge architectural importance, and sits in wonderful but neglected and tired grounds.  It needs a lot of tender loving care, and luckily, it's about to get several million pounds worth.

There is a lake of course, with an ornamental bridge, and delicately carved details on pillars and gateways everywhere.  And everywhere in the gardens are herms and urns.

Finally, I love the violence of pure white in a sepia photograph, much more compelling than in colour or black & white.  This water lily is in a small pool in the grounds.

I'll show you the house itself another day!