Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: London (13 page)

The river system to the south is equally diverse and these rivers are more likely to be seen above ground. Beverley Brook rises at Worcester Park and may be seen crossing Wimbledon Common, entering the Thames near Putney Bridge. The River Wandle draws on rainfall from the North Downs in its two sources, one near Croydon and the other at Carshalton Ponds and is mostly above ground, notably in Wandsworth. The main source of the Effra is near Crystal Palace from where it flows mostly underground to Vauxhall. The Ravensbourne rises at Caesar’s Well, Keston, close to a Roman camp south of Bromley and flows mostly above ground to join the Thames at Deptford Creek where Francis Drake was knighted by Elizabeth I in 1580. Drake had moored his ship the
Golden Hind
in the creek and the vessel, much battered after its three year circumnavigation of the world, remained there until it was broken up and its timbers put to other uses, including the building of a cupboard for the Middle Temple.

Other rivers to the south include the Falconbrook which runs underground from Tooting Bec common to Battersea; and the Peck, Earl’s Sluice and Neckringer which rise in East Dulwich and enter the Thames between Bermondsey and Rotherhithe.

During the Middle Ages these rivers were used to supply water for drinking and washing and the
Domesday Book
, dating from 1086, recorded many watermills as a source of power. By 1800 the expansion and urbanisation of London had ensured that most of them were covered over. After 1815 they became the means by which much of London’s sewage was conveyed to the Thames, sometimes with unforeseen consequences. In 1846 the foetid gases in the River Fleet caused an explosion, despatching a tide of sewage through the streets which swept away three houses in Clerkenwell.

M
etro-land, and the style of suburban living which it represented, is associated with the poet John Betjeman but the name and the place were created by the Metropolitan Railway. The railway’s managers soon realised that long-distance commuters would generate more revenue than could be earned from journeys within London, not to mention the substantial profits that would arise from property development. In 1915 the railway published a booklet called
Metro-land
which encouraged its passengers to purchase homes built on land owned by the railway and adjacent to its tracks. Half of its pages were devoted to advertisements by builders which enabled the booklet to be sold for two old pence (less than 1p). All the arts of estate agency marketing were brought to bear including a song called ‘’Neath the Shade of the Ruislip Poplars’ which ended with the excruciating:

‘It’s a very short distance by rail on the Met And at the gate you’ll find waiting, sweet Violet.’

Neither this nor the accompanying ‘Poplars Waltz’ made a lasting mark on British culture but they sold houses. Neasden was described as ‘A Model Garden Village. Peace and quiet prevail and the stretches of country around offer plenty of opportunity for invigorating exercise.’

Other Underground railways soon followed suit. The Northern Line developed Edgware which was described in 1926 as ‘a beautiful garden suburb, on a hillside facing south, protected from north winds and catching every gleam of sunshine’. Prices were competitive in all these developments. A four-bedroom detached house in Rickmansworth could be bought for £1,400, with a deposit of £150!

The most luxurious accommodation of all was at Baker Street Station, headquarters of the Metropolitan Railway. It was called Chiltern Court and consisted of half a million square feet of shops and luxury flats built above the station. Harrods declined the opportunity to open a branch there but flats, ranging from ten-room Mansion flats to three-room Bachelor flats, were in heavy demand. The first occupants included the writers Arnold Bennett and HG Wells.

Hampstead to New Delhi

One of the more unusual suburban developments was Hampstead Garden Suburb which resulted from a determined campaign by Henrietta Barnett to prevent inappropriate development close to Hampstead Heath by the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway (later part of the Northern Line). She raised over £200,000 from sympathetic supporters to build residences ‘where different social classes could live together in harmony’. Much of it was designed by distinguished architects such as Sir Edwin Lutyens who was also the architect of New Delhi. It remains a community where development is strictly controlled to ensure the maintenance of the architects’ harmonious environment.

S
everal Underground stations are no longer in use but one station rests undisturbed beneath Hampstead Heath, having never opened. This is North End Station on the Northern Line between Hampstead and Golders Green. The station was built by Charles Yerkes, chairman of the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway in anticipation of a steady flow of commuters but Henrietta Barnett’s successful campaign to protect Hampstead Heath from development ensured that the station, though completed, never opened. On 29th September 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain, it was used for a Cabinet meeting since it was, in Churchill’s words ‘far from the light of day’. Above the station is a small white building which appears to be an electrical sub-station but is in fact an entrance to the platforms. A Home Guard sentry was standing by its door on the day of the meeting, ‘when Mr Churchill popped out of the ground at my feet’. The disused Down Street station, between Hyde Park Corner and Green Park on the Piccadilly Line was also used for Cabinet meetings.

Charles Tyson Yerkes

The oldest disused station is King William Street Station, just north of London Bridge. It was opened in 1890 as the terminus of the City and South London Railway and closed within ten years when London Bridge Station opened. A proposal to use it for growing mushrooms was not pursued and it came back into the news in 1914 when some excitable newspapers suggested that it harboured a nest of enemy agents. A search by the City police yielded no results. In January 1940 it was equipped as an air raid shelter and it is now used, as are many other disused stations, as an archive store by the tenants of the modern office building, Regis House, which sits above it.

Ghost train

The lost station to which most myths cling is that of South Kentish Town, between Camden Town and Kentish Town, on the Northern Line. It closed in 1924 and became the subject of a persistent story that a passenger had alighted there and remained marooned until he caught the eye of a passing driver several days later. John Betjeman encouraged the tale in a radio broadcast of 1951. The station’s booking hall remains a conspicuous feature of Kentish Town Road. British Museum Station, situated between Tottenham Court Road and Chancery Lane, closed in 1933 when Holborn Station was enlarged; a newspaper offered a reward to anyone who would spend a night at the disused station to look for the rumoured ancient Egyptian ghost which supposedly occupied it. The reward was never claimed.

The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) had its own station, Lord’s, on the Metropolitan and St John’s Wood Railway for a few months in 1939 but when the Bakerloo Line opened to Stanmore in November of that year with its own St John’s Wood Station (now on the Jubilee Line) Lord’s closed ‘temporarily’ but was never to reopen. However, one underground station survives with sporting connotations. In 1932 Herbert Chapman, the legendary manager of Arsenal FC, persuaded the Piccadilly Line to change the name of its Gillespie Road Station to Arsenal, which it remains.

L
ondon is home to more prisons than any other city. The most notorious have closed but they are remembered in street names and bits of them are to be found in unlikely places including a famous art gallery. There were five separate prisons at Newgate during its long history. The first was the gatehouse in London’s Roman Wall through which travellers were admitted to the City itself. Its use as a prison dates from the 12th century. In the 15th century the prison had fallen into such disrepair that the Mayor of London, Richard Whittington, left money in his will for it to be rebuilt. In 1628, faced with the enduring problem of prison overcrowding, an ‘early release’ scheme was instituted by Charles I whereby prisoners could be freed provided that they enlisted in the army or navy. Whittington’s prison, which featured a statue of the mayor accompanied by a cat, survived until it was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666 and by the 1770s its successor, the third prison, was itself in a poor state of repair. A fourth Newgate was therefore built but enjoyed a very brief existence since it was destroyed in the Gordon Riots of 1780. The fifth and final Newgate, which arose from the ashes of the fourth, survived until 1902 when it was demolished to make way for an enlarged Old Bailey. Some of its walls may still be seen behind the Old Bailey itself.

Millbank Prison

Other prisons which have now vanished also have their claims to fame. The Fleet Prison was situated on the banks of the River Fleet, close to the place where Fleet Street meets Ludgate Circus. Its inmates included the poet John Donne and the Quaker William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania. Samuel Pickwick was sent to the Fleet Prison by Dickens for allegedly failing to honour a pledge of marriage and Falstaff was despatched there for numerous offences, to his great indignation, at the end of Shakespeare’s
King Henry IV, Part II
. Dickens’s father was imprisoned in the Marshalsea Prison for debt as was Marc Brunel, father of Isambard. The prison was closed in 1842, one wall remaining in Angel Place just off Borough High Street in Southwark where a commemorative plaque reminds visitors of its history. Nearby, in Clink Street, is a museum marking the site of the Bishop of Winchester’s Prison, the Clink, (giving us the expression ‘in the Clink’) which was for citizens who broke the peace on Bankside. It was burned down in the Gordon Riots of 1780 and never rebuilt.