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.

Passport for Pimlico (20.08.13)

Just south of bustling Victoria lies a little enclave comprising some of the quietest streets in London. It is an area full of intrigue and scandal, so isolated yet near to the seats of power if I were a spy I would seek out a pad here.

Roughly a lop-sided square with Lupus Street running along its southern edge and Warwick Way to the north, with Belgrave Road and Sutherland Street enclosing this labyrinthian pattern of parallel streets, one might be excused for thinking its layout was the easiest to learn while studying The Knowledge.

But there is a problem none of the roads comprising the Pimlico Parallelogram can be driven along their entire length as most are one-way in multiple directions.

The kernel of this post was that recently I asked a customer to direct me to their house, complaining, as usual, that I had given up years ago trying to learn the geography of his neighbourhood. It was then he told me that the bizarre one-way system was to protect MPs.

Apparently it is impossible to transverse this little area, this was in part to prevent the IRA targeting its high profile residents. I pointed out that if an individual was prepared to kill to further their cause, compliance of the Highway Code would not be high on their agenda, but he insisted that that was the case.

The resident safety would probably not have occurred to the speculative builder Thomas Cubitt who in the 1820s started to build these houses with their perfect Regency symmetry which were described in an 1877 newspaper article as:

“Genteel, sacred to professional men . . . not rich enough to luxuriate in Belgravia proper, but rich enough to live in private houses, its inhabitants were more lively than in Kensington . . . and yet a cut above Chelsea, which is only commercial.”

The area’s isolation was the setting for the 1949 comedy Passport to Pimlico where in a cellar children find an ancient parchment document which authenticates Pimlico as legally part of Burgundy and therefore outside British Government jurisdiction.

Now the area has over 350 Grade II listed buildings and without grand houses, Victorian serial killers, ancient monuments or tourist attractions it still feels detached from London.

With its proximity to The Houses of Parliament over the years the area has attracted Members of Parliament – and their mistresses. Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies, the young women at the heart of the Profumo scandal were sub-tenants of Dolphin Square, but no one seems to remember which flats they occupied; some say Keeler lived in 501 or 601. Other famous or infamous politicians have included Sir Winston Churchill, Jomo Kenyatta, Charles De Gaulle and Oswald Mosley.

With MI5 and MI6 a short walk away this seems to make Pimlico and perfect spot for those protecting – and spying on – the corridors of power . . .

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.

Back to Black (09.08.13)

It now has been 17 years since I started pushing a cab around London looking for fares and in that time I’ve probably driven most post-war taxis. Even before I had qualified going to a trade exhibition at Islington’s Business Design Centre got me a test drive in one of those boxy Metros. They always had trouble shifting those utilitarian boring beasts.

When I was first let loose on the streets of London my baptism of fire was an old – no very old – FX4. Registered in 1982 at a time when air conditioning was something an East Ender massaged into their hair, and without power steering, your arms would ache negotiating its two tonnes of steel around London with a penchant for swinging left unannounced when squeezing between tight gaps.

When the old girl gasped its last (well the drive to the meter broke) it was saying just let me die in peace, I’ve taken my last paying passenger.

A succession of Fairways followed some you couldn’t lock the doors, others that the only means of exiting the driver’s compartment was via the window and opening the door from the outside. One vehicle accumulated rainwater beneath the for hire sign to ensure the driver had a shower whenever he had occasion to brake heavily.

I’ve owned a more modern TX1, its shape unfairly likened to a blancmange, as with most of its siblings it had the ability to track down top secret transmissions. Perplexedly at certain ‘hot spots’ (outside the Langham Hotel is one of them), the central locking on the fob key would fail to work, occasioning a complicated procedure punching in PIN numbers to get the vehicle started again.

I should have headed this post ‘Tickled Pink’ but some enterprising cabbie has beaten me to that for recently I’ve been driving what must be the most photographed cab in London – it is pink.

A neighbour, also a cabbie, declared that it matched my eyes, while I’ve received opprobrium from Aussies standing outside a local hostelry, “strewth mate!” I think was the refrain at the time.

My postman just had to knock to deliver a parcel which clearly fitted the letterbox, so he could voice his mirth at seeing ‘Pinky’ parked outside.

Ladies would choose my distinctive livery over my more conservative colleagues while many will strike up a conversation, rather a novelty for decades the fair sex have ignored my presence.

Henry Ford might have generated the quip ‘any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it’s black’ after he realized that drying paint took the longest of any step in the assembly line and had his factory switch to the fastest drying paint they could find, which, of course, was black. But I think old HF would be speachless at the sight of Pinky.

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.

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.

North, South, East, West – Where Do The City’s Extremities Lie? (23.07.13)

Have you ever thought about London’s farthest reaches? Where it extends to in the north, how far east it goes, where its centre is? If so, I have the answers to those questions – combining some map study and consulting various online and offline resources I can give you the definitive run-down on London’s exact dimensions.

London’s northern-most point is in Enfield, on a rather unassuming stretch of the M25 between junctions 24 and 25. It lies just to the west of a feature on the map rather romantically called Tilekiln Osiers.

London’s eastern extent runs as far out as North Ockenden in the London Borough of Havering – specifically, the boundary is about halfway along a charming narrow road lined with trees called Fen Lane.

To the west, London’s boundary is again marked by the M25 – to add some spice however, the boundary actually runs around Junction 14. This spot lies just to the west of Heathrow Airport in Hillingdon.

London’s southern boundary can be found in the London Borough of Croydon, and if you want to visit the exact spot it is on Ditches Lane, just to the north of the village of Chaldon in Surrey. The nearest geographical feature happens to be Happy Valley Park – one can only assume that this is so named because you only have to walk a hundred yards further on and you’ll be blissfully happy that you’re no longer in Croydon!

In terms of miles, between its eastern and western extremities London is 35.8 miles across as the crow flies, and 27.9 miles in length from north to south. This brings us to the vexing question of where London’s centre is – in the strictest geographical sense it should be where lines drawn between the four locations I’ve set out intersect which would, surprisingly, make the centre of London the Shell Centre buildings on the Thames riverside just outside Waterloo station.

I don’t have to tackle this problem however, because there’s a long-standing convention when it comes to the geographical point that marks the centre of London. When you’re driving along the motorway and a sign says ‘London – 10 Miles’, what it actually means is that there are 10 miles between your vehicle and the statue of Charles I, who sits on horseback just off Trafalgar Square – this was the original site of the ‘Eleanor Cross’, or ‘Charing Cross’, which were a series of monuments that commemorated Eleanor of Castille, the wife of King Edward I. Today the Charing Cross is marked by a Victorian confection in the forecourt of Charing Cross railway station, although as we’ve established it isn’t in the right place . . .