For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Little Green Street Blues (06.08.13)

Heritage and history, you can’t get away from it nowadays: Restoration Home, Downton Abbey, Antique Roadshow; touch your remote and up pops another programme reminding us of our past and the need to preserve it.

On a blog that’s devoted to the world’s most historically diverse city I’m reluctantly finding myself after 4 years returning again to a little gem of a street in North London – Little Green Street. This is one of only a handful of modest Georgian streets left preserved much as they were 250 years ago.

As modern London’s population rises exponentially what building land – wherever its location – remaining has risen in value, and that has driven (driven being the relevant word for Little Green Street), developers to use land unsuitable in a more sane city.

The building plot in question is a restricted backwater called College Lane which used to be home to a British Rail Staff clubhouse, long since closed, now just ripe for development.

They plan to build “20 mews houses arranged in terraces of 2 and 3 storeys and a block of 10 flats comprising studio, 2, 3 and 4 bedroom flats” with “provision of underground car parking”. Now that seems like a pretty big building project to me involving thousands of lorry loads as the excavation progresses and yet more deliveries of building materials.
This would be a complex operation in any circumstances, but for the developers the only access to the site is up Little Green Street as quaint narrow cobbled street barely 2.5 metres wide. In fact the logistical task seems so insurmountable I’m surprised that Kevin McCloud isn’t making a Grand Designs programme for Channel 4 about the insanity of the build.

Most of us have come to associate Georgian architecture with the great or exceptional houses that are shown in television adaptations or by visits to a National Trust house, but for the majority of people they lived in humbler dwellings. Second rate houses were built by merchants were no more than 500-900 sq ft in size. These houses, small by modern standards, would have been termed large by the Georgians. The most important rooms would have been given the largest windows. On Little Green Street, eight of the homes are bow-fronted and were originally shops, selling goods such as ribbons, coffee and mousetraps.

Having survived the Victorians zeal for redevelopment and the Blitz, in 1966 The Kinks used the street as a backdrop for their 1966 song appropriately named given the circumstances Dead End Street which became one of the first true music videos.

If a great crested newt or natterjack toad had been found nearby the site would have been given SSSI status and the developers prevented from commencing work. But Little Green Street only has as its defenders people wishing to preserve a small cul-de-sac which inevitably has led to accusations of nimbyism.

This week the developers plan to dig up this historic street and its setts (cobbles) will be lifted a fortnight later to stop the construction vehicles sinking into a road, that used to see little more than horse-drawn brewery drays, as hundreds of trucks drive along here over the next four years.
As Nick Goodall from the Little Green Street blog wrote last weekend:

“Take a last walk along the cutest Georgian Terrace in London while you can. After the weekend of the 3rd and 4th August, you will need permission of a ‘banksman’ to enter the road.”

Little Green Street looks like a perfect slice of Regency London, John Betjeman has written about it in his poetry and Frommer’s Guide has nominated it as one of the ‘11 Places to See Before They Disappear’, I fear their advice – now a little late – might proved to be prophetic.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

A trip to the Tower (26.07.13)

Most of the time writing CabbieBlog is pretty mundane: observation, researching and writing with few perks. But once in a while the blog opens doors as it did for me last week. I was invited to a demonstration of BT’s new Home Hub 4, itself a pretty pedestrian corporate IT talk.

The unique setting at 621ft above Fitzrovia made this presentation much more memorable – at the top of the BT Tower. Completed in 1966 and opened by Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 2003 the tower was given grade II listing by the government showing just how iconic it has become to Londoners. It was Britain’s most poorly kept secret. Londoners were expected to not notice its presence, in fact for many years it did not appear on any map as its location was protected by the Official Secrets Act, even the taking and storing photographs of the building was forbidden.

Now thankfully those restrictions have been lifted, but not others. After going through some rigorous security checks you enter the lobby. Evidence that BT was a major sponsor to last year’s game is evidenced by having two torches mounted on plinths.

Our group was ushered into the high speed lift, unusually for nowadays complete with a lift attendant. An indicator duly recorded that its speed was 1,400 ft. per minute. With no proper emergency stairs a special act of parliament had to be passed making it the only building in the UK that can be legally evacuated by lift.

We arrived at the viewing platform which is just below the famous revolving restaurant, taking 22 minutes to complete its circuit. It was closed in 1980 now closed due to security fears, but many diners at the time said that eating while being spun round was disconcerting.

Being the highest building in Fitzrovia it has unrestricted views across London, although while taking these panoramic shots it was rather disconcerting to notice that the windows had handles – could they be opened?

We were told it was unusual to see as far as the new Wembley Stadium in the distance. Note the handles on the windows.

The purpose of the visit was to see a demonstration of BT’s new router but on this floor the Wi-Fi signal was curiously was absent my i-phone.