Cripplegate: destruction and rebirth

It's quite easy to get lost in the maze of highwalks in London's Barbican Estate, and to some it may be disorientating to discover a medieval church in the middle of the Barbican's brutalist sprawl.  St Giles without Cripplegate is a rare survivor of the Great Fire - even if it didn't fare too well during the Blitz - and its name is one of the last remaining references to this ancient corner of the Square Mile.

The church's slightly curious name - similar to many other church names in the City - refers to its site.  Any church with the word "without" in its name was situated outside the old city walls, in the case of St Giles outside the Cripplegate.  Other examples include St Sepulchre without Newgate, St Botolph without Bishopsgate and the long gone St Ewan within Newgate.  Although St Giles is a patron saint of beggars and cripples, the origins of the name "Cripplegate" may lie in the Saxon word "crepel", meaning a covered passage.   Indeed, old documents sometimes use the spelling "Crepelgate".

Cripplegate in c.1650.  Image sourced from Wikipedia.

Cripplegate was one of Roman London's six gates - the others were Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate and Aldgate (Moorgate was a 15th century addition).  The Cripplegate initially led into a fort - or "barbican" that served as an extra defence on the northern boundary of the City, but became another of the city's gates when the barbican was demolished.  The 1650 image shown above indicates that there were a number of rooms in the gate's structure and at different times the gate was used as a prison and as private dwellings.  The Cripplegate itself was demolished in 1760, with its materials sold off for £91, a rather large sum at the time.  Like many of the old city's ancient gates and toll bars, the Cripplegate was removed to widen the road and ease traffic congestion.  The area of town that the gate had been in retained the name Cripplegate, and to this day the electoral ward for the area is still bears this name.

During the Second World War, the Cripplegate area was particularly badly bombed.  By 1951 only 48 people were registered as living within the Cripplegate ward, so widespread was the damage.

Source

The above picture looks south over either Moorgate or, more likely, Aldersgate (now renamed Barbican) tube station towards St Paul's, showing the vast extent of devastation in this part of London.

Source

In the top left hand corner of this second, haunting photograph of a devastatated Cripplegate, one can see the tower of St Giles' church.  St Giles without Cripplegate was built in the late fourteenth century, although there had been a church on the site since the Saxon period, and even before the Second World War the church had had its fair share of misfortunes.  Fires in 1545 and 1897 badly damaged the church, but in 1940 the church was repeatedly hit by German bombs and completely gutted, with only its outer walls and tower remaining.

The first wave of bomb damage to St Giles. Source.

In amongst the wreckage from the first hit on the church is a stone pedestal, with a fallen statue alongside it.  This statue was a monument to John Milton, most famous for the epic poem Paradise Lost and who was buried in St Giles without Cripplegate after his death in 1674.

The fallen monument to Milton. Source.

The statue was rescued and returned to the church after its restoration.  After the war, St Giles was a lone building surrounded by huge areas of bombsite.  Although many of its treasures had been lost in the Blitz, the restored church was furnished with items from St Luke's Church, Old Street, which had been rendered unsafe and abandoned in the 1960s due to subsidence.

This picture of St Giles shows how the church has been rebuilt over the years - by the time of its battering in the Blitz it had already undergone significant structural changes and repairs.  The roof area, for example, is noticeably modern but is in keeping with the building's Perpendicular Gothic style.

Around St Giles, plans were being drawn up for an enormous new housing estate.  A large estate, the Golden Lane Estate, had been built in the area immediately north of Cripplegate in the 1950s and in 1965 work began on the estate now known as the Barbican.

The Barbican Estate is built in the Brutalist architectural style, which was popular in the postwar era and was known for its use of concrete - the term "brutalist" comes from the French béton brut meaning "raw concrete".  This use of concrete was the downfall of a number of large housing developments from this period as the concrete used was not of sufficient quality and subsequently, many estates have had to be demolished due to structures becoming unsafe.  This was not the case with the Barbican, which utilised a high grade concrete which has not deteriorated over time.  The estate was awarded Grade II listed status in 2001 due to its ambitious scale and innovative design - its buildings were connected by highwalks (the "streets in the sky" so often utilised in postwar architecture, with varying success) and the estate also contained many green spaces, including two large lakes.  Today the estate remains a popular residential area, with properties changing hands for very high prices.

The Barbican conists of a number of mid-rise blocks and three very tall towers  - Shakespeare, Cromwell and Lauderdale - which were, until the Pan Peninsula complex was built at Canary Wharf, the tallest residential buildings in London.  The estate is also home to the Barbican Centre, a major arts venue, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the City of London School for Girls and the Museum of London.

Despite being almost fifty years old in places, the Barbican still feels like a very futuristic place.  Many examples of "streets in the sky" or brutalist housing estates were failures, either down to poor building materials or ill-thought out design that led to the estates becoming hotbeds for crime and neglect.  The Barbican is an unusual example of a scheme that can be seen to have been a success - although its success has come at the cost of considerable gentrification, it could be argued.

In amongst all this retro-futuristic concrete, St Giles without Cripplegate remains.  Alongside it are some structures even more ancient than the old church - the remains of part of London's Roman Wall and its medieval additions.

The above photograph, looking from Wallside over to the City of London School for Girls, shows the 13th century bastion tower that was added to the fortifications on London's wall.

Several different types of stone and building styles can be seen in the wall, showing how the wall was repaired and strengthened over the years.  Several large sections of the old city wall survive in the Cripplegate area - many were exposed by the destruction of the Blitz and today are preserved.

Finally, this blog wouldn't be complete without a gravestone or two - here, some of the old tombstones from St Giles' churchyard have been set into the walls of one of the Barbican's lakes.

Whether or not Brutalist architecture is your cup of tea - it remains one of the most divisive architectural styles of modern times - the Barbican is well worth a visit, even though it is quite easy to get lost on the highwalks.  It is easily accessible from the Museum of London, or from the footbridge from the exit of Barbican tube station.  Although little remains of the old Cripplegate area, the surviving ancient church and wall fragments give the estate a sense of what was there before the German bombs fell.

A rare glimpse - Aldwych tube station tour, 25th November 2011

I was lucky enough to get a ticket for one of the London Transport Museum's rare tours of the former Aldwych Tube station, which began today (Friday 25th November).  Located on the Strand near St Clement Danes church, Aldwych stands out with its distinctive Leslie Green frontage of dark red tiles.

When it first opened in 1907, Strand Station (it was renamed Aldwych in 1915) was the terminus of a short branch of the Piccadilly Line from Holborn.  The 1951 Central London Tube map shown below illustrates where Aldwych lies on the network, showing its relative isolation.

Cropped from a map found at http://www.verydodgy.com/tube/- a wonderful archive of old Tube maps

As a result of being at the end of a short branch that, despite a number of plans to extend it to other stations such as Waterloo, terminated in an area already well-served by public transport, Aldwych was never a particularly busy station and within a decade of it opening one of its two platforms was closed to the public.  This disused platform, which shut in 1917, immediately gained another use - housing 300 paintings from the National Gallery that were being kept safe from German Zeppelin raids.  More about the disused platform in a moment.

Moving back to the present day, upon arriving for the tour our group were ushered into the old ticket hall.

Like other Leslie Green-designed Tube stations, the ticket hall is adorned with distinctive green tiles.  As it was always a quiet station, Aldwych's ticket hall is small and to keep costs down very few staff manned the station - in 1922 the ticket booths were taken out of use and the person manning the lifts also sold the tickets, making Aldwych effectively able to remain open with just one staff member on site (cuts to staff on the Underground network, therefore, are certainly not a new concept).  In the 1980s, a ticket machine was installed.

Aldwych remained open for many years despite its small footfall.  It was considered for closure on a number of occasions but continued to run a peak time only shuttle service from Holborn (this shuttle service was sometimes as small as just one carriage long).  It is estimated that at the time of its closure in 1994 it was serving just 450 passengers per day.  However, its closure was not primarily down to lack of use - by the early 1990s its lifts were approaching 80 years old and were in desperate need of replacement.  This would have cost millions of pounds and it was judged to not be worth it due to small passenger numbers, so the station was closed.

"Disused" is not the word to describe Aldwych, however - although it is no longer a functioning Tube station, it is regularly used by London Underground for training exercises and testing, and also - more famously - as a film set.

The ticket booth pictured above is not original, neither are the suspiciously pristine tiles - it is a replica that was put in for the purposes of filming.  Many films and television programmes have used Aldwych for filming, including the most recent James Bond film Quantum of Solace, The Battle of Britain, Atonement, 28 Weeks Later and V for Vendetta.  Because the station lies on a short, unused branch it is possible for realistic tube station scenes to be filmed without any disruption to the public transport network.

Natalie Portman as Evey Hammond in V for Vendetta - with the platform at Aldwych as the location for a disused Victoria underground station

We were led down a set of spiral stairs, similar to those you might come across at stations like Covent Garden and Gloucester Road.  There are 160 steps down to platform level and after a while I experienced the strange sensation of having to concentrate intensely to remember how to walk down stairs - possibly  a form of vertigo.

Once we'd reached the bottom of the stairs, we were led through a fairly well-kept, twisting tunnel to the first platform.

We were directed onto the platform that was used for Piccadilly Line shuttle services until the station closed in 1994.  Our guides led us to one end of the platform, where a volunteer was waiting to tell us more about the history of the station and the trains that served it.

The posters behind the volunteer are not original, but like the replica ticket booth pictured earlier are copies produced for the platform's use as a film set.

The silver train pictured above is a former Northern Line train that is now based at the station.  As well as for filming purposes, this train is used by London Underground for testing and also emergency drills - as this platform is relatively intact it provides an excellent location for staff training exercises that can take place without having to necessitate closures or disruptions on the main Tube network or having to build an expensive simulated station facility.

The tunnel to Holborn is still operational and electrified, allowing the old train to be moved out of the station if necessary.

During the Second World War this platform was used as an air raid shelter.  Once again the nature and location of Aldwych made it easily adaptible for other uses - the station was closed to trains in September 1940 and despite it not being located in a residential area, it proved popular as a shelter as it was deep underground.  As its popularity grew it was installed with proper flushing toilets, a canteen and a library, but all the same with up to 3,000 people sheltering there it cannot have been a pleasant, comfortable or sanitary place to hide from the bombs.

The disused platform is a completely different story.  Unlike the easy route to the first platform, the path to the second platform was uneven and damp, with little stalactites dripping from the ceiling.

After its closure in 1917, the tunnels at either end of this platform were bricked up, as illustrated above.  Like other disused tube stations, this platform was used for storage.  Probably the most illustrious items stored down here were the Elgin Marbles, which were kept safely guarded underground along with many other treasures from the British Museum in case the museum was hit by bombs.

A section of track remains alongside this platform and, as it dates from the station's opening in 1907, is the only remaining example of tube tracks from this period.

This long disused platform shows the signs of many experiments by London Underground over the years - it provided an ideal blank canvas to test out new ideas and materials.  As a result, most of the original Leslie Green tiling is gone, although some of it remains under the many posters that cover the wall.

There are also examples of newer tiles being tested on the platform's wall - the red tiles pictured below look as though they were perhaps destined for the Central line.

There are a large number of posters dating from the late 1960s or early 1970s on the platform - these were not put in place for filming purposes but to test a new kind of glue for attaching advertisements to the wall in tube stations.  Given that the posters are still here 40 years later, I'd hazard a guess at the glue being a success.

The last part of our tour concerned those pesky lifts, the eventual cause of Aldwych's closure.  The lifts are now the only remaining example of very early lifts from the turn of the century.  There are two lift shafts at Aldwych, but only one was ever used - the way the lifts were designed meant that two lifts shared one shaft.

The two lift door frames can clearly be seen on the other side of this lift shaft.  The design of the lifts - two next to each other - was clever as the two lifts had an interconnecting door, which could be utilised in case of an emergency.  If one lift broke down, the second lift could be sent down until it was level with the stricken one, and the door could be opened to allow trapped passengers to transfer to the functioning lift.

Back at surface level, we were allowed a quick look around the lifts, which are now permanently parked at surface level.  Apart from the interconnecting doors, they are very similar to the big lifts you see at stations like Goodge Street and Covent Garden.

Through the lifts was our exit - we were quickly ushered out to make way for the next tour group.

If I'm to be critical, it would be to say that both myself and the friend I went with found the tour to be a bit rushed and short, making the ticket price of £20 seem a bit steep.  We were constantly being hurried along by staff, with little time to ask the volunteers questions, and considering that most of the people on the tour were taking pictures (it's worth mentioning to anyone coming on the tour that DSLR cameras are not permitted), this was a little frustrating.  However, I hope that the large number of tours was down to it being so rare that Aldwych is open to the public, and down to the desire to give as many people as possible the opportunity to visit the station.  It was certainly a treat to get to see it and the volunteers were all friendly and informative.  If you're one of the lucky people to get tickets to go on a tour round the station - enjoy it!

Quick snapshot: ghosts of the Second World War (part 1)

Like so many little bits of history, the ghost sign pictured below is something that is so easily overlooked.  It can be found on Carlisle Place, SW1, a quiet street close to London's Victoria Station.  But you'll have to look carefully.

This sign, quite high up on the wall of a mansion block, directs people to the nearest bomb shelter, under the pavements of the street itself.  One cannot imagine such a shelter would have survived a direct hit, but given how badly the Westminster and Pimlico neighbourhoods suffered during the Blitz, it would have provided a safer alternative to staying in one's own home.  The sign's an unlikely survivor of the war - the mansion block it's painted on to is exceptionally well kept and the sign does look as though efforts have previously been made to remove it.

Many of the residential buildings in SW1 have vaults under the pavement.  The house I currently live in has three - they have a curved ceiling and were primarily designed for storage, although in some houses and flat conversions nowadays you'll see them converted into extra rooms or even wine cellars.  One of the vaults in my own home houses the washing machine, tumble dryer and a freezer.  As bomb shelters they would have afforded protection from anything but a direct hit or a large quantity of falling masonry.  SW1 also has a distinct lack of green space, with many houses and mansion blocks not having gardens, so the vaults took the place of Anderson shelters.

Carlisle Place is one of those typically contradictory streets often found in London - it's a combination of million pound flats in smart mansion blocks, expensive cars parked outside, and a homeless centre with tramps and beggars congregating nearby.  Perhaps during the Blitz rich and poor were similarly huddled together in the vaults, seeking shelter from the Luftwaffe's indiscriminate bombs.

Bletchley Park

A state secret until the 1970s, Bletchley Park was home to the British government's top codebreakers during the Second World War and played an important role in the Allied victory.  It is now open to the public and having a free weekend on my hands, I decided to get on a train and pay it a visit (it is less than an hour's journey from London).  Much like it was during the war, Bletchley Park today is a hotch-potch of cottages, stables and huts nestling round an architecturally eccentric Victorian mansion.

The mansion and its estate had been owned by the Leon family but was put on the market in 1937 after the deaths of Sir Herbert Leon and his wife Lady Fanny.  It was bought by a property developer keen to redevelop the site as a housing estate but before this could happen it was acquired by M16.  Its location - adjacent to the railway - was an obvious asset and in the summer of 1939 the Government Code and Cypher School (later to become GCHQ) moved onto the site.  Bletchley Park would offer them a base safe from the anticipated air attacks on London.  To keep the purpose of the site secret, those arriving were referred to as "Captain Ridley's shooting party."

Anyway, to return to the present day - on arrival at Bletchley Park I was directed into Block B.  Admission for adults costs £12, and this price includes a free re-entry pass for the next 12 months.  Block B is one of the original wartime buildings (although the ladies loos were mercifully much more modern) and houses a fairly eccentric group of small exhibitions, as well as the shop.

It is probably worth noting at this point that I'd badly misjudged the sniffles that had been building up during the working week and within half an hour of arriving at Bletchley I had become quite unwell, and was pretty much unable to stop sneezing.  However, having travelled 50 miles to get there and keeping in mind the dedication of the codebreakers who worked at Bletchley during the war, I decided to persevere, although I do think that feeling so unwell probably meant I missed one or two things along the way (which makes the free re-entry pass even more excellent).

One of the first things you'll see in Block B is Stephen Kettle's statue and memorial to Alan Turing, probably the most well-known of the Bletchley Park codebreakers.  An astonishingly gifted mathematician who was an early pioneer of computer science, Turing's career and ultimately his life were cut short by his appalling treatment after he was outed as having had a sexual relationship with another man.  The exhibitions at Bletchley Park, however, make little reference to his sad death and concentrate instead on the incredible acheivements of his life.

In Block B we are confronted with a rebuilt, fully functioning model of the Bombe, a complex mechanical device used to break the German enigma codes which Turing helped to develop. Enigma machines - originally devised in peacetime for the purpose of preventing industrial espionage and keeping banking transactions confidential - worked by using a series of rotors to encrpyt messages, and the bombe consisted of a large number of rotors which effectively made it several Enigma machines working together, to increase the probability of breaking the code.  It was entirely mechanical and not programmable in the way that a computer would be.

The bombe - a very complex piece of kit!

This bombe was a prop in the film "Enigma"

Close-up of the rotors.

Block B also houses a large number of Enigma machines and other codebreaking contraptions, some of which are on loan from GCHQ and are described quite crypically, suitably enough.  It makes one wonder how many of these types of machines are still in use despite the huge advances in computer technology over the last couple of decades.

As well as the codebreaking devices, Block B exhibits many more everyday items from the Second World War, giving an insight into what life would have been like for those working at Bletchley Park.

Radio equipment

A gasmask for a baby

There was also an impressive collection of Airfix models of Second World War planes, tanks and ships, children's toys from the period and personal collections of veterans who served in different campaigns during the war and people who worked at Bletchley Park.

Upon leaving Block B I became a little disorientated due to feeling very poorly and sat for a while in the grounds before joining a guided tour, which began up at the mansion.  By the end of the war several thousand people worked at Bletchley Park and the mansion and its outbuildings which had originally made up the codebreakers' accomodation were joined by a number of huts and more permanent buildings.

 

Hut 8 (above) was where Alan Turing was based during his time at Bletchley Park.  Turing was initially put in a position of leadership, but was replaced when it became clear that his interests lay primarily in codebreaking.  He was joined by many of Britain's finest mathematicians and cryptanalysts, including Dilly Knox and Gordon Welchman.  Many of the codebreakers working at Bletchley Park were recruited straight from university, making its workforce - which also included a large number of female workers - predominantly youthful.  Many were housed with local people or placed in makeshift accomodation, and they made their way to work by whatever means they could find.

Today Hut 8 is used as an exhibition space, and sadly at present a lack of funding means that some of the other huts are in a sorry state of repair.  A number of them are boarded up and derelict which I found very sad - Bletchley Park may not be very glamourous, and the nature of its work was really quite nerdy and technical, but nonetheless it played a hugely significant part in the Allied victory and the talents and dedication of those who worked there deserves more recognition.

Bletchley Park is also home to the National Museum of Computing, which houses a rebuild of Colossus, the world's first programmable computer.  Colossus was designed by Tommy Flowers, a Post Office worker, in 1943 and a Colossus machine was operational at Bletchley Park by 1944.  Flowers' work at the Post Office was invaluable as the valves used to power telephone exchanges (which were in those days operated by the Post Office) were integral to the design of Colossus.  One drawback of these valves, however, meant that unlike a modern computer Colossus could never be turned off.  Despite this, it was a great success and by the end of the war ten of them were in operation helping to decrypt German intelligence.  

Colossus and its blueprints were officially destroyed after the war to maintain secrecy and the Colossus on display at Bletchley is the work of a dedicated team led by Tony Sale.  Using the remaining information about Colossus that survived the war, they rebuilt at Mark 2 Colossus in Block H, where a Colossus machine would have stood during the war.  It is a fascinating thing to behold - all wires, little lights and a constant stream of printouts.  Its inability to store any memory is another reason why it must be constantly switched on.

Apologies for the quality of these pictures - the bright sunlight flooding into Block H made it very hard to see how the pictures had come out!

After the guided tour was over, I went back to Hut 8 to have a better look at the exhibitions in there.  One of the exhibits was about "Pigeons in War".  Having seen a couple of stuffed pigeons who had been decorated for bravery during the war in the Imperial War Museum North, this little exhibition made for interesting viewing.  I still think it's wonderful that pigeons, as well as other animals such as dogs and horses, were recognised for their bravery during wartime.  The Nazi occupying forces severely punished anyone found aiding an Allied carrier pigeon and many clever methods were used to make the messages the birds were carrying as inconspicuous as possible, including removing a feather and placing a rolled up message inside its hollow part before reattaching said feather to the bird!  Special parachutes were also designed so that pigeons could be dropped from planes.

This cage was used for training carrier pigeons.

A pigeon parachute

Pictures of pigeons decorated for their bravery

After the pigeons exhibit, I decided to call it a day.  Despite feeling so poorly I had an excellent time at Bletchley Park and found the whole place fascinating.  I will definitely be going back again, and would urge any readers to visit too.  It would be very sad if such an important part of this country's history was lost due to a lack of funding, and given the current trend in government funding cuts Bletchley Park is dependent on visitor contributions more than ever.  I do apologise for the lack of technical content in this post - I wasn't at my most receptive during the visit and computer programming and codebreaking are certainly not areas that I have much knowledge of.

I had a much needed dose of cold relief when I got home!