The City – Page 3 – slightly weird

17th September 202021st October 2020

A pandemic visit to Barts

Thursday, 17 September, 2020

Every year I go for a check up at the Sleep Clinic at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in East Central London. This year my annual check up was by phone but, on that call, they told me that they wanted me to come in and have a face-to-face appointment with a therapist to get a new machine and mask. In fact, I was welcome to send a representative but that would mean not choosing a mask myself. I decided to go in person.

I have to say that I was a little nervous about going – it was the farthest I’d travelled in months, and it was to a hospital. However, I thought I could make the best of it by taking photographs in the area. My wish list was Smithfield Market, which is under development for the Museum of London, the hospital itself, and a quick visit to Three Uncles Cantonese barbecue take out, on my way to the train. Krish thought he might come and wanted to see Charterhouse Square. I wasn’t sure he’d be coming until I was almost ready to leave on Thursday late morning. Yes, he was!

There are several ways to reach Barts, which is what most people call St Bartholomew’s Hospital, but we opted to take the bus which usually goes all the way to the door or to Barbican tube station, which is at the east end of the large area that Barts and Smithfield covers. Our bus was going only as far as St Pauls so Barbican it was.

It would be tough to find another area of London with more and varied important history. Another bout of research reveals so many dates and occasions, my head swims, but I tried really hard to stick to my route and focus! To be honest, all the buildings, plaques, and monuments were going to be more than enough to keep the anxiety at a reasonable level.

Approaching the Angel Area before turning down Goswell Road — Approaching the Angel Area before turning down towards Goswell Road, which leads into The City. So far, so quiet

Leaving Angel, with the Barbican estate looming

Crescent House on Goswell Road, my photo bleached by sunlight. It’s my landmark to start getting off the bus

Some of the towers of The Barbican estate

Two estates are dominant at Barbican – Barbican estate itself and the 1950s Golden Lane Estate. Golden Lane Estate comes first. (This from my brother: ‘The first building to be completed was Bowater House, off Fann Street, named for a Lord Mayor of London whose descendants we are related to.’) The most obvious building on the estate is Crescent House, which has a Tudor look so is very distinctive. The estate was built to house those who were bombed out during WWII. Crescent House was the last to be built. By then the huge Barbican scheme was already underway.

The Barbican estate deserves a blog of its own but I have no idea when that day will come. It’s a very complex site over a very large area. Barbican covers the area that was once the main Roman Fort of London (120 AD) – barbican , from Barbecana, which means a fortified outpost or gateway. It has 2,000 flats, maisonettes, and houses on what was a bombsite after WWII. While Golden Lane estate is a City-owned council estate, Barbican is an upmarket development, designed and built for affluent City professionals and their families, charging market value rents.

‘City Jam’ (Eley Kishimoto 2018) pedestrian cossing by the Barbican, part of the Culture Mile ‘Colourful Crossings’ art project

If you go to Barbican estate, you’d be impressed at its size (15ha) and variety of use. It contains the Barbican Centre (an arts, drama and business venue), the Barbican public library, the City of London School for Girls, the Museum of London, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. There are gardens, cafes, even arenas in there. What you’d also notice is the walkways, called ‘highwalks’ one to three stories above ground level. This separates the estate from the car parks and roads below. You can get lost walking about the highwalks – very entertaining. I wasn’t even going to try going in – it demands a lot of time!

Leaving the Barbican towers behind, cross the road and you’ll find Long Lane, which leads into the medieval area of Bartholomews. I love wandering around here, although today not everything is open. I could take a hundred photos here but today it’s just a handful.

Founders Hall, built in 1985 in the traditional style. The original (1531) was destroyed in The Great Fire. This building is the fifth Founders Hall. Founders? An early medieval guild formed to promote the interests of its members and to ensure high standards of quality and workmanship in articles of bronze and brass

The Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, a medieval church founded in 1123

A cheat - The oldest house in The City — 41-42 Cloth Fair, Barbican. Built between 1597 and 1614, its the only house in the City of London to have survived the ‘Great Fire’ of 1666. This makes it the oldest habitable home in the city. I admit to cheating on this – I didn’t photograph it! How I missed doing so, I have no idea

Rising Sun pub, its alley leading to a view of Smithfield Market

And it’s on to Smithfield Market.
Continue reading “A pandemic visit to Barts”

22nd July 202023rd July 2020

Summer in the City

Sunday, 19 July 2020

On Sunday morning, Krish brought up the idea of getting on a bus and going somewhere. He said maybe it would be quiet on the buses and we could wander around The City on a peaceful day. The City is dead out of office hours as a rule but surely now it would be even deader. I thought about it for a little while and then said yes, let’s go.

We took the 242, which goes along Kingsland Road, then turns down Commercial Street at Shoreditch High Street Station. We sailed past a very splendid new Dan Kitchener geisha art piece but stayed on until we went one more stop, where the crowd – if there is one – will have dissipated. And out we got.

We walked back a little bit to Christ Church, where I’d seen a cattle trough. I’ve taken lots of photos of the church but this time it was the trough and drinking fountain that caught my eye. The church itself was the first of three that Hawksmoor built between 1714-1729 and for me, it’s the landmark that dominates the area.

The trough and fountain are lovely. They were put there by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association, set up in London during the 19th century to provide free drinking water.

a drinking fountain and cattle trough installed by the Metropolitan Cattle Trough and Drinking Fountain Association.

A drinking fountain and cattle trough outside Christ Church, Spitalfields — A drinking fountain and cattle trough installed by the Metropolitan Cattle Trough and Drinking Fountain Association outside Christ Church, Spitalfields

Red phone box — There aren’t so many red phone boxes left and most have no phones inside or are used by the homeless. This one is pretty derelict

Art at Christ Church, Spitalfields. These two have been here a long time undisturbed

We decided to get off the main street to head towards The Gherkin. I’ve walked along Toynbee Street many times but never past Middlesex Street. We saw very few people, but there were a few stalls set up at the top near Commercial Street.

Mambow facade on Toynbee Street — On the old and crumbling street, Mambow restaurant was a very pretty sight

Past Middlesex Street, Old Castle Street — Past Middlesex Street, Toynbee Street becomes Old Castle Street and the new is crowding out the Old. Along here are some buildings belonging to the London Metropolitan University

Old Wash Houses — I had somehow never seen the facade of these old wash houses. They were originally Whitechapel Public Baths, built in the 1850s, and now housing the Frederick Parker Collection

Continue reading “Summer in the City”

22nd February 2020

More foiled plans and changes, changes, changes

Thursday, 20 February, 2020

We decided to go to Hackney Wick to see how things were progressing there. Hackney Wick is an artist’s community, with an overground station, near the Olympic Park at Stratford. It’s always been a mass of old buildings, factories, industrial parks, and warehouses and over time the artists and visitors have littered every wall, every door with art.

At one time, the art was glorious. Those days seem to be gone. A new entrance to the overground station has changed the orientation of the area and it confuses me. In the process of the change – where homes and factories have been torn down, the art has been sacrificed. As well, the old station entrance, which was always a bit of a dump, hasn’t been torn down yet. The day we arrived, we saw that several of the new buildings had been completed, the fancy office buildings, the luxury flats with names that were supposed to recall the area’s heritage – The Bagel Factory, Stonemasons Yard, Ceramic Works – they’re highly priced in this obviously deprived area. I wondered how many would just be owned rather than lived in. It made me that familiar mixture of curious, excited and sad to think about it and we cut our walk short since Krish was now motivated by the nearby Well Street Fish and Chips.

A rather ghostly and scribble-littered Hackney Wick – The new, the old, and the very quiet

A car crash in Hackney Wick near the estate. I didn't photograph the onlookers — A car crash in Hackney Wick near the estate. I didn’t photograph the onlookers. Notice more construction

A visit to the little Tesco and another to Lidl, then on to Vietnamese Supermarket.

We’d passed Lennox House on Cresset Road, approaching Well Street. The architectural notes read ‘These flats were built in 1936-7 to the designs of J E M MacGregor for Bethnal Green and East London Housing Association. There are 35 flats. The three bedroom flats were on the first floor, one bedroom flats on the top floor and two bedroom flats on the other levels. The original idea was that the central portion of the building beneath the stepped flats should be used as a covered market. The income from this would be used to subsidise the rents of the flats above. However, during the building period, land in the area was designated for residential use only. The Housing Association was also committed to providing a garden for each flat (apart from those on the ground floor).’ We noticed local brewery barrels on the main floor – did they brew in here, or just store the barrels? I think just store.

Lennox House, by Well Street, is a fantastic building

These balconies seem well-suited to creating the towering gardens we saw in Turin and Milan

Barrels from the 40ft brewery- a Dalston success story

At the bottom of Cresset Road, Well Street is under construction – how long till this gentrifies completely?

And then, on the bus home, I discovered I didn’t have my bus pass. I looked through my entire bag and checked all my pockets. It was gone. The pass office told me that it would cost £12 to replace it but that my renewal was due to be sent out. I decided to wait and pay full price until it arrived.

I was going alone to see A Passage to India at the Tower Theatre that night so I left early and visited Lidl and the Vietnamese supermarket first – no pass had been found. I phoned the Tesco and the fish and chip shop – no pass. I was scuttled.

The play was very good. I’d seen the Masterpiece Theatre series years ago. My memory of it was nothing like the play I saw. I enjoyed the fact actual Indian actors were playing those roles. I felt that British imperialism was probably fairly represented too. The xenophobia, the bigotry, the superior attitude, the refusal to accept something different by considering it unclean, barbaric. un-Christian so heathen…and the fear. Each side underestimated the other really. And at the end the anger was real.

Next, how my plans continue to be foiled! Continue reading “More foiled plans and changes, changes, changes”