by James on Oct 31, 2009 in Streets
Zig. Zag.
That’s all it takes to glide through this hidden enclave of Westminster. 30 seconds of your time, richly rewarded. Barton Street becomes Cowley Street via a sharp but neighbourly right angle, gently escorting the modern inquisitor away as quickly as they arrive. Both streets developed and named by the great Georgian actor
Barton Booth in 1722.
Since then luminaries have continued to domesticate this secluded and delightful quarter.
TE Lawrence (a renowned cyclist) wrote
Seven Pillars of Wisdom at No. 14.
Lord Reith took the
BBC public while living at No. 6 around the corner.
Ralph Vaughan Williams composed from properties on both streets. Sir John Gielgud’s parrot would outstare passersby from a Cowley St window until the early 70s .
Despite the stresses of a central location with no easy escape, this tiny Georgian neighbourhood remains as desirable as ever. Its quirky layout and position place it on no sensible cycling route, which is exactly why it should be on yours.
Georgian street sign, Elizabethan street sign
Click to enlarge panorama
Lord Reith probably imagined the BBC iPlayer from here
Heart-breaking: “Whoever took my little bike, please return, I am v sad.” “I am very sad” “Where is my little bike, no more”
These houses have vaults, and those skulls look realistic.
The Liberal Democrats now strive for third place from the building to the right
by James on Aug 15, 2009 in Streets
Let’s say you want to ride south from Camden to the centre of town.
There are at least 6 different routes to take, and you may prefer the most direct. Not in the Guvnor Owners’ Club, we prefer instead to take the best.
It’s unlikely to be the shortest route, or even to release you most conveniently. It will instead be that which guides you along a secret backstreet discovering why you live where you do, and why you ride a bicycle. And as a bonus you’ll be transported in the general direction you desire.
Park Village East is one such street. Starting at the corner of Parkway where Ramsay & Hartnett’s York and Albany sits newly refurbished, this backstreet will escort you to the Euston Road, whispering fascinations and abjection as you glide along its 200 year timeline.
Laid out by John Nash in the 1820s as part of the rus in urbe (country in the city) designs for Regent’s Park and environs, one lengthways half was destroyed by the expansion of the railway in the early 1900s, leading to the uneasy aspect of overgrown walls and open sky to the west. To the east the Cumberland Arm of Regent’s Canal once provided a quasi-rural outlook to the back gardens, until filled in around the middle of the last century. Yet, despite these planned ravages, when houses come on the market here it still makes the papers.
The expanded railway formed part of the attraction to the Camden Town Group of painters who lived and worked in the surrounding streets; you will roll close to the old studios and homes of Walter Sickert and others as you make your way south.
As Park Village East becomes Stanhope Street the mood offsets, and the low-rise bat cave of Addison Lee answers oft-pondered questions about the origin of their omnipresent black people carriers. Dense social housing quickly envelops the route, each building euphemistically named after rural aspirations: Scafell, Langdale, Borrowdale, Derwent, Hawkshead. Here and there the cobbled under-street reemerges from years of neglected tarmac, exuding a bourgeois aesthetic without the middle class overhead. Finally past the declined and confused pub / restaurant / bar that was the Lord Nelson to the sterile tranche of commercial buildings known as Triton Square.
In the last 3/4 mile you have seen it all, without a single bus or horn to disturb.
- Park Village East, with the railway off to the left. The pad on the right is yours for £3.9m
- York and Albany
- York and Albany converted coach house
- Addison Lee Bat Cave
- Bat Cave needed
- Lord Nelson, Stanhope St
Explore Park Village East in Street View
View Larger Map
by James on Jul 21, 2009 in Streets
Cherish the sweep from the Mall into Horse Guards, where burgundy tarmac delivers a Palladian vista flanked by pelicans and plane trees. As the road widens your lungs ease and shoulders dehunch, forcing a smile on the most churlish and unabashed joy for the rest. Our mission is to effect a chirpy greeting from the armed guards at the Foreign Office gate, and each day we chip away at this lofty goal.
Horse Guards Road, this modest sweeping incline can make your day
Ivy covering the Admiralty Citadel, built as a bombproof fortress during WWII. Detested by Churchill, this accidentally Brutalist architecture sets off the neighbouring parade ground perfectly.
Horse Guards Parade, a joy to cycle past
We can only presume such regimentation must aid in the guarding of horses
Pelicans inspecting a cyclist
London: The Old Horse Guards from St James’s Park by Canaletto
Detail, these strollers in 1749 are just counting the decades until the invention of the bicycle.
