Northern Line Section Three - London Bridge to Morden

Even if I hadn’t already worked along the horizontal line maps from left to right on each trip so far, I’d still have chosen do it this way on this one, since ending at Morden means I’m in relatively close proximity to a tram stop, and I should get to reward myself for completing the Northern Line with a tram ride.

That’s to come, though, as we start at London Bridge.

London Bridge station first opened in 1836 – which is just 7 years after the world’s first inter-city passenger railway, the Liverpool and Manchester, opened – so it’s the oldest station still in operation in London. Not the oldest station building though. Somehow it’s appropriate when you consider the vital role that London Bridge has played for centuries in bringing people in and out of the capital. Alright, I shan’t begin a lecture now, but suffice it to say that the area around the station, in Tooley Street and especially Borough High Street absolutely reeks with History. The famous George Tavern is just around the corner, and backing onto it stood the Tabard inn, where Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims set out for what would later be immortalised in his Canterbury Tales. As for London Bridge Underground, well, as you can probably see from the sketch, it ain’t nothing to write home about, being housed in what is, ostensibly, a railway viaduct arch. Nonetheless, I make a snap decision that I’m going to walk from here to Borough station since I will be able to quickly take in Borough Market, and Shakespeare’s Globe on the way.

When I was in my teens I decided one fine spring morning to walk over each of London’s Bridges – those that allowed pedestrians – from Tower in the East to Richmond in the West. Never managed it, giving up at Putney, but that’s another story for another day. But the point is, since that day when the 70s were merging into the 80s, things sure have changed here on Walton’s mountain. Back then I walked through streets which maybe hadn’t seen that much change since Victorian times. Now though everything close to the river looks new, shiny and expensive. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is that this part of Southwark was traditionally dedicated to pleasure. It’s where the fancy in Tudor times would have enjoyed the delights of bear baiting, maybe taken in a play, and sampled the services of the Winchester Geese, that is the prostitutes licensed by local landowner, the Bishop of Winchester.

Looking at engravings of the original City and South London Railway station at Borough you can see that although it has changed a lot, the basic configuration of the building hasn’t, and the semi circular curve around the corner is pleasing. The lift shaft had its dome removed way back in the mists of time, but the round housing is still there. Looking at the engraving I don’t know that removing the windows at street level did the building any favours, but the alternating bands of red and yellow brick are far better than plain blank wall all in the same colour would be. The dull metal structure in front of the lift shaft really does nothing to enhance the building’s general appeal though.

I make the decision to continue walking to the next station, Elephant and Castle. I do this with a little trepidation, bearing in mind that the traffic system around the Elephant and Castle would need a considerable facelift to raise it to the status of an eyesore. Still, this is the district that gave birth to both Sir Charlie Chaplin and Sir Michael Caine, so it deserves some respect at least. And surprisingly, it earns some from me when I see one of the most appealing Leslie Green stations I’ve yet to encounter. In truth this owes a lot to the 3 storey contemporary block built on top of it, but I don’t care. This is most appealing, and I’m happy to say nothing like what I expected from this area. This is the first Leslie Green station I’ve found south of the Thames, and can’t help wondering whether it’s the only one. Time will tell on that. I double check google to confirm that this is our second northern line station named after a pub. At one time there was a very neat theory doing the rounds that the original Elephant and Castle pub was named after the Infanta de Castile – a Spanish princess, possibly Catherine of Aragon, or Eleanor of Castile. Who knows?

The first sketch is the Northern Line entrance. They don’t actually count as separate stations, probably since you can interchange between lines inside the station, unlike the two Hammersmith stations, by way of comparison. I’ve sketched both, though, because there’s such a contrast between the Leslie Green station, and this 2003  station.I quite like this one, as an example of what can still be done, although it’s not quite of the same level as some of the jubilee line extension stations south of the river, if my memory serves me correctly.

I’m not going to hang around to find out, though. I take my first tube ride of the day between stations as far as Kennington, and when I emerge I get to see a prime example of a City and South London Railway building. The building is relatively familiar to me from university days, when I’d cycle home from Lewisham on the odd weekend to get my washing done. I’d go New Cross – Peckham – Camberwell – Kennington, past the Oval cricket ground and tube station, over the river at Vauxhall Bridge, along by the river past Chelsea and Albert Bridges, turn left at Battersea Bridge and cycle up to Hammersmith, then take Kings Street and Chiswick High Road to the Great West Road, left at Boston Manor home and a short cycle home. The station is as neat and well proportioned as a Leslie Green building, and somehow the same cream and orange brickwork as at Borough works well here. In particular I love the dome above the lift shaft. No apologies, this is just a lovely little station, and I’m tempted to stop and make my sketch then and there. Perhaps if I only had a couple of stations to go I would, but it’s important to me that we finish the Northern line today and so we press on.

When I emerge from Oval station I can see that the station has been refurbished since I last passed this way. Google informs me this happened in 2007, and I’m sorry to say that I don’t really like it. The tiled walls of the exterior are neat but bland. The stainless steel and glass canopy is better than a generic blocky plastic affair would have been, but it has the effect of making a 1920s building look like a half hearted attempt at making a modern building look a bit like a 1920s building, if you see what I mean. I mean, it still beats a 1970s hole in the wall type station all ways till Tuesday, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t what I remember and it isn’t what it might have been.

The next station is Stockwell, and this is where the tragic shooting of Jean Charles de Menenzes took place in 2005. Without going into long detail, Mr. Menenzes, a Brazilian working legally in Britain, was mistaken by the police as a person involved with the London tube bombings of the previous day, which resulted in him being shot by the station by plain clothes police officers. He is remembered in the station with a mosaic plaque. Bearing all of this in mind it seems almost fitting that the station itself is a sombre, dark 1970s rectangular block, with one storey above the station street level entrance level. I don’t want to dwell on the station, but notice that adjacent to it is the entrance to the Stockwell deep level shelter. There were 8 of these built adjacent to Underground stations during World War II, and the striking circular structure at Stockwell has been painted as a war memorial by children of a local primary school. Apparently it was only used as an air raid shelter for the one year, but I can’t help wondering just how many people’s lives were saved by it.

Clapham North allows me a useful 2 minute rant against grey bricks and grey tiles after I emerge into the daylight. The building, I’m sorry to discover, is actually a Charles Holden. The shape is a quite pleasing wedge at the corner of two streets, and above the plastic name board it is faced with cream coloured tiles. But what was Charles Holden thinking of with the grey tiling at the street level? Couldn’t he have used brown, if he was going for contrast? I also think that having nothing in the way of windows or glazed panels was a mistake as well, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Wikipedia informs me that there is another deep level shelter beneath the station I would have taken my snaps and headed straight back down inside it. As it is I don’t waste a lot of time.

Like Ealing Common, there is nothing Common about Clapham Common station at all. It is absolutely lovely, and, like Kennington, a lovely demonstration of just how pretty these City and South London Railway stations actually were. As if to balance this there’s a modern structure on the south side which Wikipedia rather kindly describes as a steel and glass pavilion. Well, it’s certainly not a monstrosity, but it’s not the sort of thing which would have me reaching for my writing home pen. But having mentioned this, I look back at the original station building. This one is scrupulously well kept, and let’s be honest, who wouldn’t have a sense of pride working in a building such as this? Some buildings don’t suit domes, but these Northern line stations really do. The brickwork looks as if it has been cleaned recently, and all in all the station is just a feast for the eyes.

I’m even more severely tempted to stay and sketch Clapham Common station, but manage to drag myself away. I do this in the knowledge that the next stop, Clapham South, was the first station of the Morden Extension to be built, and this suggests we’ll now be in the run of distinctive Charles Holden stations which will take us through to Morden. This supposition proves to be absolutely correct. The shape is a similar wedge to the Oval. However the station is faced with Portland stone, similar to that used for Hounslow West. Above the entrance is a tall and wide Charles Holden patented glass screen , which incorporates the roundel. I’m intrigued with the two columns either side of the panel. It’s also interesting that the block to which the station building is adjoined, which I’d imagine was built at the same time, is made from the brown bricks that Holden would use extensively on his Piccadilly Line buildings a few years later. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it’s quite enticing to think of an architectural journey being played out here in stone, glass and brick.

Here’s a little test of your age. If I write the name of the next station as Bal – Ham, do the words ‘Gateway to the South’ automatically come to mind? If not, then it’s because you’re too young to have yet encountered Peter Sellars’ joyous travelogue skit of the same name. Balham is a name which tempts a stab at a Meaning of Liff definition, and I come up with Balham (noun) An obvious lie which circumstances prevent you from calling one. For example, any pupil’s excuse for not doing their homework is baloney (or a couple of ruder terms which also begin with the letter B), but any teacher’s excuse for not marking homework is balham. The most obvious difference between Balham and the previous station is the lack of the distinctive block built onto the back of that station. Balham stands alone, and it works well enough for me, unusual though it seems to find two consecutive Holden stations being quite so similar to each other.

Tooting Bec is far too appealing a name just to leave unmolested. Playing my Meaning of Liff card I decide that Tooting Bec, then, is obviously the archaic term for the summons used by Henry VIII for his Groom of the Stool to wipe his royal backside with the neck of a swan, the signal for which would be issue on a hautboy, which was a Tudor wind instrument. Reference- Ye Swannes Nekke, by Sir Thomas Wyatt

“Fain must I bringe ye swannes nekke,

Mine master sounds his tooting bekke”

As for the station, well the main entrance is pretty much a South Clapham/Balham clone, and there’s nothing ostensibly wrong with that. What is interesting is that there’s another entrance which is a narrower version, on the east side of the road junction. This is particularly distinguished through having the roundel on the side glazed panels as well as about the entrance.

I noticed a statue of Edward VII outside Tooting Broadway station, and it’s probably sited there since he was a great fan of 1970s sitcom Citizen Smith, the opening title scene of which featured the eponymous citizen emerging from the station. Here I’m delighted to see that although the station stands on another corner site, here Holden uses a sweeping curved frontage. This gives the station a little more grandeur than the previous. It has the same columns separating the glazed panels as the previous stations, but it’s only here that it strikes me firstly that the capitals of the columns look like the globe on top of Clark Kent’s Daily Planet building, and secondly, that they’re probably meant to be a 3D representation of the roundel. Now I get it.  God bless dear old Stanley Heaps, but it really isn’t difficult to see why Frank Pick was so taken with Holden over the former.

After the exuberance of Tooting Broadway I find myself just slightly disappointed to see we’re back to the familiar corner wedge. But it’s hard to stay disappointed. If I recall correctly, The last few stations all lay along the same roadway – is it the A24? It’s the road I used to take when I was driving to my brother in laws Wimbledon home from Tottenham anyway. Colliers Wood is the last of this stretch. Interestingly the station is almost in the shadow of the Colliers Wood Tower, once voted by far the ugliest building in London. It’s had a makeover since being turned into homes, but hey, there are somethings you can’t polish, no matter how much glitter you roll them in. Like other Charles Holden stations on this southern section of the Northern line, Colliers Wood is a listed building, and rightly so. Of course, using Portland stone as a building material does have its drawbacks. To use the vernacular, it can be a bugger to keep clean, especially when exposed to the great British weather, and with the sun sullenly hidden behind a duvet of grey clouds the station looks as if it could do with a good sprucing up.

As I mentioned earlier, my brother in law lives in walking distance from both Collier Wood and South Wimbledon tube stations, and since the day is yet middle aged I decide that I can spare the time to walk between the two stations. South Wimbledon is similar in shape and style to Tooting Broadway. It’s interesting to compare my impression of the station to the District Line Wimbledon station. They’re both worth looking at, but when it’s all weighed up I rather prefer Holden’s station. I’d like to tell you that South Wimbledon Station is home to a lifesize statue of Orinoco, the laziest of Elizabeth Beresford’s Wombles of Wimbledon Common. I’d like to tell you that, but since I’ve just made it up it would be an utter lie. All of which serves to highlight the dearth of interesting facts that my meagre research into the station has found. Still, if nothing else it does at least suggest to me a new tube mind game – statues I’d like to see at particular stations. I’ve already got a candidate for Lambeth North, but since that’s on the Bakerloo we’ll wait until we get there for that one.

I get back on the train for the last leg to Morden, and though this isn’t very funny, I can’t stop thinking the thought that there really should be a statue of Peter Sellars outside Balham station, for reasons I’ve already mentioned. And Humphrey Lyttleton outside Mornington Crescent.

I can’t think of anyone whose statue should be situated outside Morden tube, but if there was a statue of the wazzock who designed the 60s block built on top of the Charles Holden station at least we could throw rotten fruit at it. The only good thing I can think of to say about it is that it’s only another 3 storeys high. The block exudes the 60’s ‘build ‘em quick, build ‘em cheap and build ‘em crappy’ ethos. It can’t quite ruin the impressive effect of Holden’s original building, although it has a bloody good try. It’s the squarest of these Holden Northern line stations, which maybe is a clue to the direction he would later take with his designs for a significant number of his Piccadilly line stations.

Well, that’s it for the Northern line, and I’m completely satisfied with my day’s trip – if anything I’ve been overfed with fine station buildings. All that remains to make the day a perfect one, is a ten minute walk to the tram stop, and ride on the London Tramlink service back to Wimbledon.

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Now that I’ve completed the Northern line I take a few minutes to sit back and take stock. The 4 lines I’ve now completed make up almost 200 out of the 270 stations on the network. Even though there’s still 5 lines to go, there’s less than a third of the challenge to be completed. I make the observation that I can do the 24 Metropolitan stations I haven’t yet visited in a comfortable two trips, the Bakerloo and the Jubilee should be done in one trip each, and one final trip could even see me do the Hammersmith and City and Victoria in one marathon trip. Completing the Circle Line into the bargain. It’s worth noting that none of these planned trips would actually take in as many stations as, for example, my second Northern line trip. Not only that, but so far I have made 13 trips, and this means I can wrap it all up with another 5.

In terms of statistics, I notice that I’ve now visited 21 out of 29 stations which are south of the river. That’s 72%, whereas 179 out of 241 stations north of the Thames is actually 74%. Not really sure what this goes to show, although when you compare the numbers it does who just how poorly South London is served by the Underground. Overground, DLR and local National rail services take up the slack a bit, but even so it’s still a pretty uneven picture.