Old Street

 

I started my 'Underground Challenge' 10 years ago when I decided to visit each of the 272 tube stations and explore the areas in which they are situated. This is the 204th station I've visited in those 10 years and this is the 17th station I have written a blog post on this year. I always have high hopes that I will post two a month but never achieve that number. Maybe next year I will do better.

Old Street station serves both the Northern Line and National rail. Originally built in 1901 it has gone through a few reconstructions since then, the latest being completed this year.

A series of corridors  and escalators takes you to the ticket hall.

The new above ground station looks very eco friendly with its green roof. Unfortunately work underground hasn't made much of an impression as they haven't even got lifts going down to the platforms. Lots of unseen work apparently done on the wires, cables, communication and fire safety systems.

Between 2009 and 2018 there have been 215 collisions on the roundabout where the station is sited. The collisions resulted in a number of injuries and two fatalities. It is known as one of the most dangerous spots on the Central London road system. 12 years after the improvement project was announced and a huge amount of money spent, the hoardings are down and the new, hopefully safer, roundabout revealed.   

Whilst it looks a lot cleaner and smarter it has been criticised for not delivering the promises of  it being a large civic space in the UK's first tech city. It has changed from a square roundabout to a three way junction

Now referred to locally as silicon roundabout, it is surrounded by new office blocks with an emphasis on information technology.

I can see why some people refer to this building as 'The Buttocks'.

I decided to go down each of the roads from the roundabout and explore the area that way. My first stop on City Road was The Wesley Chapel. This is John Wesley's house and the Museum of Methodism as well as a chapel. Wesley commissioned the house to be built in 1778 and he moved in in 1779. He used it as his London base during the winter as during the rest of the year he travelled the country, on horseback, preaching and spreading the word. After his death in 1791 the work at the chapel continued. In 1898 his house was opened to the public as a museum.

Across the road is the Bunhill Fields cemetery. The name Bunhill is derived from 'Bone Hill' as the area is reputed to have been a burial site for over a thousand years. It became the burial ground for non conformists in the 18th and 19th century, A burial ground for people  who did not conform to the Church of England but were of other faiths such as Baptists, Methodists, Quakers etc  It was closed to burials in 1854 with about 123,000 people having been interred here. Among those buried here are William Blake, John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe. 

Daniel Defoe was an author  and journalist who gained fame after his death in 1731, mainly from his book ' Robinson Crusoe'. The monument was erected 140 years after his death. The inscription reads:

 This monument is the result of an appeal in  The Christian World newspaper to the boys and girls of England for funds to place a suitable memorial upon the brave Daniel Defoe

It represents the united contributions of seventeen hundred persons

Sept 1870

The grave of John Bunyan

  

The gravestone of William Blake, English poet and painter.



Next to Bunhill cemetery is Armoury House home to the Honourable Artillery Company which has been home to the HAC since 1735. The company was formed in 1537 and is the oldest regiment in the British Army. Finsbury Barracks is next to Armoury House and all members of the regiment train here weekly. Soldiers from the HAC are frequently deployed on operations in support of the Regular Army.

I walked through the cemetery and turned right following a sign for the Quaker garden.

The meeting house stands on the edge of what was, between 1661 and its closure in 1885, the principal Quaker burial grounds in London. The meeting house is only a fragment of a much larger complex of late Victorian buildings. Today the building is used by community groups.

 

Next to the meeting house is a former large burial ground known as Quaker Gardens. The present area is only the eastern part of the burial ground and is surrounded on all sides by buildings. A large London Plane tree stands in the centre with smaller ones at the corners. The large tree was planted when the burial ground closed in 1855. The ground is maintained by The Society of Friends and Islington Council.

This garden is on the site of Bunhill Fields Burial Ground which was acquired by the Society of Friends(Quakers) in 1661. The remains of many thousands of friends lie buried here including George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends who died 13th Jan 1691

Overlooking the garden and old burial ground is a secondary school which  has been converted into flats.

I walked through the gardens and round the school onto Chequer Street and the Whitecross Estate. In the late 19th century, there was growing pressure to clear the slums of London and this area had some of the worst slums. An American banker and philanthropist, George Peabody, set up the Peabody Trust with a large part of his own fortune to try and improve the housing for the poor in London. In 1883 Peabody built two estates on either side of Whitecross Street. One estate consisted of 21 blocks of flats and the other one had 11 blocks of flats. The blocks were constructed round courtyards and were generally five or six stories high with a laundry room in each block but not a bathhouse. They did have 32 pram sheds though.

None of the original blocks remain. The estate was badly damaged in the Second World War. After the war it was decided not to rebuild the original blocks but to demolish the ruins and start again with more modern facilities. The blocks of flats we see here today were opened in 1957. The Peabody trust still exists to create homes and communities. Today there are 108,000 Peabody homes with 220,000 residents.

In the middle of the estate is the Whitecross Street community centre.

On the side of the centre is this mosaic made by the children from the local primary school.

I was now on Whitecross Street and was struck by the number of murals and art related places.

  

  

The artworks are painted each year during the 'Whitecross Street Party' by different participating artists. I must look out for the date of next year's event and come along to have a look.

I walked the length of the street to see what the giant obelisk at the end was. It turned out to be the spire on the top of St Luke's church.

Although the church was designed by John James, the obelisk spire and west tower were by Nicholas Hawksmoor. The church was closed in 1864 due to subsidence but it has now been restored by the London Symphony Orchestra as a space for rehearsals, performances and educational purposes.

In the street behind the church is Ironmonger Row baths. Renovated in the 21st century at a cost of £16.5  million, the baths now have 2 swimming pools. a gym. a spa and squash courts. A far cry from the original public baths and laundry that opened here in 1931. An association for promoting cleanliness among the poor was founded in 1844. The condescending aims of the 1846 Public Baths and Washhouses Act were typical of Victorian social reform.  

To promote the health and cleanliness of the working classes, and as a necessary consequence, improve their social condition and raise their moral tone, thereby tendering them more accessible to and better fitted to receive religious and secular training.

Born in the early 50s in the North of England I remember the bathhouses where the men would go for their weekly bath and the women would take their laundry to wash. It was 1959 before we moved to a house with an indoor toilet and bathroom. 

The swimming pool and a small Turkish baths were added here in 1937.

I needed to retrace my steps to the roundabout. As I was about to cross the road I looked back and saw this huge ghost sign. As the sign says this building used to be a Salvation Army hostel for the homeless. The charity was founded by William Booth in 1865 and moved to Old Street in 1890. The men would work in the factory here in exchange for food. Work at the factory included sorting and mending old clothes, cutting wood, making mattresses and brushes. The building was in need of renovation and the factory moved to Whitechapel. The Salvation Army raised the funds to refurbish the building and it reopened in 1900 as a hostel with accommodation for 450 people. It was at this time that the sign was painted on the building. The hostel closed in 1969. The building is now the headquarters of Shelter, a charity for the homeless.

This impressive building on Old Street used to be the Margolin Gramophone Company factory. It used to manufacture the Dansette record player until cheaper Japanese and other Far Eastern Hi-Fi equipment arrived in the shops. Production ended here in 1969 when it went into liquidation.

On a wall overlooking Fortune Park is this mural.   I have seen 3 or 4 of these memorials to Cato Heath who suffered from Cerebral Palsy and died at the age of 21. His mother, an artist, is hoping to complete one for each year of his life. So far she has completed 10.

“I decided that I wanted to do more about the days that he lived, and thought about doing a piece for every year of his life so used my diary and hospital records, to remember certain days which were unlike other people’s lives, and for the other days I used brighter colours to show that other side, which were more normal and happy.” Emma Douglas.

The large sign on this building needed a second look as I couldn't see a church. On closer inspection I saw the doorway on the right with a cross above it. A notice board next to the doorway enlightened me. The church is the successor to a school chapel of c.1850, replacing it in 1901 in the basement of a large new school block. St Joseph's school closed in 1977 and subsequently the floors above the church housed the offices of the Apostleship of the Sea, the Catholic Herald newspaper and the National Association of People abused in Childhood. The whole site is now being considered for redevelopment including plans for a new church and parish hall.

But this small door to the right of the building was the entrance to St Joseph's church in the basement of Lamb's buildings.


Once back at the roundabout I took a left onto City Road. This huge building was built in 1904 and financed by the Wesleyan Methodists. The Leysian Mission was one of about 100 large halls built in the industrial towns and cities of the UK. The halls were designed to look nothing like a church as the Methodists wanted to encourage people through the doors and away from the temptation of drink and the music halls. The Mission became a welfare centre for the poor of the East End. It provided health services, entertainment in the form of film screenings and lantern shows. The building was badly damaged in the Second World War and with the introduction of the Welfare state, the need for the Mission was diminished. It was sold in the 1980s and converted to flats. As the renamed Imperial Hall it is still an imposing and impressive building 120 years after it was built.

Almost next door to the Leysian Mission was The Alexandra Trust Dining rooms. Built in 1898 from funds provided by the tea magnate and philanthropist Sir Thomas Lipton. His idea was to provide a restaurant that offered very cheap meals for the poor. The Alexandra had three dining halls, each one seating 500 people, so that 1500 customers could be fed at one sitting. The kitchen was large enough to provide up to 12,000 meals a day. In 1898 you could buy a 3 course meal of soup. meat and two veg followed by a pastry for four and a half pence (2p). The slow decline of the dining rooms began after the First World War possibly because of the decrease of the population in the East End during the wars. By this time schools were providing food for the pupils and the need for such large dining rooms diminished. The Dining rooms closed in the early 1950s. Since then the building has been used as tobacco manufacturers, printers, offices, residential accommodation and  now a hotel.

As you leave the tube station you might notice this green line on the floor. Follow it and it takes you to Moorfield Eye Hospital.

I have been coming here for years but this is the first time that I noticed the clock in the shape of an eye.

Founded in 1804 by John Cunningham Saunders, it was the first hospital in the world to specialise in the treatment of eye disease. In 1837 Queen Victoria gave the hospital, which was in Lower Moorfields, its Royal Charter. It was renamed the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital but everyone still called it Moorfields. It moved to this site in 1899. The new building included many new innovations including central heating in the outpatient department, electric lighting and even an x-ray department. With the introduction of electric current in the operating theatre, it meant that powerful electromagnets for particle removal were now available. Surgical results were greatly improved. By 1902 58% of eyes were saved compared to 26% in 1895. 

During the Victorian (1837-1901) and Edwardian (1901-1910) eras this was a very industrial area and a number of the buildings are still in use either as offices or flats.

This was a pipe making company as in the smoking variety. It is now art studios for painters, printmakers, sculptors etc

Next to the John Redman building is this Victorian building which was once a fire station but in recent times was more well known as Jamie Oliver's 15 restaurant. Oliver launched the not for profit restaurant to train 15 disadvantaged, young, unemployed candidates into chefs. The project lasted 17 years with 150 apprentices completing the programme. The building now houses The Curve Club bar and restaurant as well as hosting events.

Some factories have been converted into hotels. 

The area is such a mix of old and new.  Just  across the road from the dining rooms that used to serve 12,000 cheap meals a day to the poor working class of the East End there is now a 5 star hotel - the Montcalm.

 I had been wandering around for what seemed like hours. My original plan was to continue walking and having a look at Shoreditch but I think I've seen enough for one day. Old Street had far more to offer than I realised.