STORIES

5 more bizarre local transport follies that never quite took off

Think HS2 is going badly? Our part of London has been at the forefront of crazy big transportation schemes for generations before – from the wildly ambitious to the downright ridiculous.

When they’re good, they’re transformative, (witness the Eurostar and accompanying restoration of gothic Victorian classic St Pancras Station).

Others have found their moment of dominance eclipsed with the arrival of a new technology, (see the abandoned railway and canal infrastructure that’s now glossy eating and shopping district Coal Drops Yard, or the stabling for all those once-vital road horses up at Chalk Farm).

And those are the former glories of which traces even remain (the original grand Euston Station and its iconic arch have long been erased, either by the Luftwaffe - or the town planners that flew in next).

With the future of the huge HS2-shaped wasteland yawning behind today’s Euston still very much in the balance following last week’s cost-cutting announcement by the PM, it looks like – once again – the neighbourhood is going to be transformed in unexpected ways as a big transport project barrels through the land, until it doesn’t.

That got us thinking about some of the other hairbrained schemes that never quite happened, that would have obliterated the Camden we know today…

• 🛬 King’s Cross Airport was a wild 1930s proposal to build a series of elevated half-mile long runways above the local railway sidings and bring airborne commuting into the heart of the city. Slum housing would have been cleared and the people decanted into those towers visualised directly underneath. Obviously the idea didn’t end up flying, plus the runways would have become obsolete with the arrival of bigger aircraft within years, too.
  

• 🚗 Back in the 60s, there was a plan to encircle London with elevated motorways and underpasses known as The Ringways, which would have carved up huge swathes of the city including Camden Town. Here are the scarcely believable plans. Some sections, like the Westway and Blackwall Tunnel Approach did get built, but residents in the path of the roads were up in arms so the scheme was scrapped, and Camden established its famous Market on the proposed route instead.
  

• 🏙️ The growing popularity of the car was also the reasoning behind a 1954 proposal knock down most of the small streets in Soho, and replace them with six 24-storey tower blocks set on a giant platform, with streets and cars underneath, and canals ferrying passengers through landscaped gardens to helipads up top(!)
  

• 🏢 Recommendations in 1963’s influential Buchanan Report, ‘Traffic In Towns’ included demolishing much of Piccadilly Circus and rebuilding Tottenham Court Road and Fitzrovia as an elevated pedestrian precinct with complex new traffic light-free road layouts below.
  

• ✈️ One totally wild transportation plan was realised, but only the once, (see main pic above). It saw a Harrier Jump Jet fly between the old St Pancras Goods Yard - now site of the British Library - and Lower Manhattan in 6 hrs 11 mins. It was all part of 1969’s Daily Mail-sponsored Transatlantic Air Race from the top of the Post Office Tower to the top of the Empire State Building. Watch this video of lost footage from the race and marvel at the pre-health and safety era capers - and the clouds of coal dust.

FOOD & DRINK

🍣 New places to eat, drink…and ferment, this autumn

• 🍷 Warren St is now home to a second branch of Islington’s beloved wine shop and tasting rooms Must & Lees. It’s a beautiful space, and they’re already hosting loads of fun tasting events, such as the upcoming Fried Chicken & Champagne (Thurs 26th)

• 🌿 Primrose Hill's long-standing vegan restaurant Manna obviously loves animals, so is very dog-friendly, and until the end of November, anyone having dinner with a pooch in tow on Thursdays and Fridays can enjoy a special 3-course ‘dog owners’ menu for just £22.

• 🫙 It’s a Fermentation Celebration all weekend at Highgate Village’s Omved Gardens. Sign up for a place on Sunday’s introduction to lacto fermentation to learn the basics.

• 🎃 Damage from the fire that gutted Euston’s Lost Souls Pizza is taking time to fix, so they’re bringing their famous black dough pizzas, complete with satanic balsamic pentagram glaze, to sister restaurant True Romance for 3 spooky Halloween-themed weeks from tonight, appropriately Friday 13th.

• 🍥 Hampstead High Street gets its own ‘omakase’ experience from next week, as Iné opens in the spot that used to be known as Goldfish. It’s from the people behind Mayfair’s Michelin stared Taku, but at £100 for 15 courses, isn’t (quite) pitched at Mayfair prices.

• ☕ The latest branch of Caravan is opening on Drury Lane next Monday (23rd), bringing their superior brunch and coffee thing to Covent Garden, all housed in a massive old grain store building - that’s set to see further new food openings in the coming months, too…

CAMDEN DIARY

Purposefully poor High Street experiences and poorly written local media

The weekly Camdenist column: observations and frustrations from living, working and playing in the borough…

FRIDAY: Coming into possession of a cheque for the first time in many years required a rare lunchtime dash to a high street bank. Camden Town’s HSBC isn’t even open on weekends, despite essentially being a row of ATMs with two long-suffering attendants on hand ready to attempt help when the computer inevitably says “no”.

The process still inexplicably involves handwriting a paying-in slip. The machine doesn’t recognise First Direct cards, requiring manual input of the same numbers yet again after various rejected attempts. The whole experience is vaguely soul destroying - far worse than the many micro-frustrations of home and app-based banking. It feels like HSBC want to make it such a poor option that even the luddites will eventually cave, and soon nobody will seriously consider high street banking as a viable option.

Over the road to the EE store, and the theme continues. Yes, upgrading phones is easy to do online, but speaking to a human IRL and supporting the local shopping arcade is honourable, and nice. Unfortunately, once again the experience is having all that purpose wrung firmly out of it.

The assistant tries to access my account using what looks like a Windows 95 PC, and the security system is asking for endless ID and codes. It soon locks her (and me?) out, without successfully being able to make any progress. She advises I go home and go online. It will certainly be a whole lot easier than waiting for someone else to navigate an obsolete version of that very same system, which you have to feel is rubbish by design.

It’s clearly the big brands who are desperate to prove the high street is over and cut more overheads, which is all the more reason to support the small independents who actually want to be there. Obviously banks or mobile network operators are far from that, so when they all finally give up the ghost, it would be nice to see whatever replaces them actually celebrating a trip to the shops, as opposed to turning it into a grim list of sub-par disappointments.

TUESDAY: The local media landscape is no less challenging than the international one in the face of bots, misinformation, AI, and deepfakes. A news story lands in our inbox titled Dangerously high air pollution in all Camden neighbourhoods. It’s a bit odd, particularly with the fact that’s it’s illustrated with a pic of a belching power plant (Drax?) that’s clearly nowhere near here.

Closer inspection reveals that the article is largely written by AI trained on national air quality data, with a touch of human intervention to personalise it. The links below lead to near identical stories about the air quality in Stevenage, Hull and Hounslow. We wonder how many thousands of these ‘local’ stories are being fired out daily, each trying and grasp our limited attention, and perhaps further sidelining quality local writing in the process?

Later, the Camdenist Instagram feed serves us a jarring post from the mysterious @welovecamden. It’s one of many ‘local’ themed accounts that tout for likes by posting cliched tourist fodder (you know the vibe: Camden Lock bridge sign, Amy Winehouse statue, rainbow pedestrian crossings etc etc) without indicating who is actually behind it all.

The horror of the terrorist attacks in Israel has created an inevitable wave of social media clashes and fake inflammatory posts, alongside a fear of the rise of hate crimes here in London. While obviously trying to be supportive, whoever posted that the civilian catastrophe unfolding in Israel and Gaza made for a good reason to go out and grab some local shawarma really needs to rethink the boundaries of their promo strategy.

“Visit @mazal.london, an outstanding Kosher restaurant and take-away in Camden Town! Treat yourself to delicious Israeli cuisine and show our united stance against terror, anti-Semitism and discrimination!”

We’re all being deluged with dubious content, and even when the intentions are fairly benign and inevitably commercial, we’re going to need better strategies to filter out the increasing dross. It’s another reason we’re looking at how to monetise this newsletter, so please click your feedback via the poll above, if you haven’t done so already.

MUSIC

Live gigs on your doorstep this week

•  🎸 Sam’s Cafe in Primrose Hill makes for a very intimate music venue tonight, as singer-songwriter Katie Raban entertains, and you can eat dinner too.

• 🎻 Join the Eusebius Quartet this Sunday evening (15th) as they play a selection of chamber music at Bloomsbury’s Conway Hall.

• 🪕 Wednesday(18th) sees folk duo Megson reunited with playwright / actor Kieran Knowles and double bass player John Parker for a special showcase concert of their show – The Herald, at The Water Rats.

Gig highlights in association with Halibuts.com

MORE GOSSIP & THINGS TO DO

• ➡️ We’ve previously spoken of the exciting plans to transform Euston Tower, and tomorrow sees a new exhibition open showing the plans, alongside food and activities for all, with a series of workshops in the coming days, too.

• ➡️ The Royal Institute of Philosophy has a series of lectures on Madness and Mental Health over the coming months to challenge thinking and present new ideas on how we relate to this topic.

• ➡️ The fiesta of bar discovery that is London Cocktail Week kicks of tonight, and if you’ve got a wristband, then the special drinks are only £8 all week long at loads of great spots.

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