A stinkpipe in Islington

Oh my god... how many time have I walked past this and never noticed it until last month?

Estimate = 825 times!

I am always banging on about how things are hiding in plain view, to look up, look down and around you,  yet here's me not noticing a stink pipe across the road from Essex Road Post Office. 

I happened to notice it when I had to side-step a woman who was texting and walking but not looking where she was going (grr!) and I was immediately confronted by the maker's name on the metalwork. I then looked down at the wide base and thought, ooh that looks very stinkpipey, and so I stepped back to take a better look. Yep!

Much of Ham Baker's Victorian metal street furniture, in the form of lamp posts and stink pipes, still lines our modern streets. Indeed the company is still trading.

Considering the amount of stink pipe pics I have taken over the years I am surprised I have posted more about them. Here's a post from back in 2010 which shows some with attractive crowns. 

Staying in Islington, earlier this year, I also [finally] noticed another stink pipe at the Holloway end of Liverpool Road on the triangle in front of the Baptist church – estimated previous walk-pasts = 384(!). And, near that, there's also another one on Holloway Road at the end of Eden Grove (which I had spotted ten years ago).  Closer to my home, there's one up near the railway line in Sussex Way, N19, at the corner of Hatchard Rd, and another on St John's Way, N19. I'm sure I will think of more once I hit the 'publish' button here, but hey, that'll do for now.

This Essex Rd pipe will now form part of my "The Only Way Is Essex Road" guided tour. Tho, it can't be the only one in the vicinity.

A walk around the Cheynes

Just some pics I took in the little area of Chelsea that borders the Thames.
It's a really interesting area close to the lovely Chelsea Physic Garden. The 18th Century houses of Cheyne Walk have had many famous residents including Rossetti, George Eliot, David Lloyd George and Keith Richards and Mick Jagger to name just a few. See a fuller list here.

A stink pipe, egyptian benches, Thomas More, Hans Sloane

Closed pub, birds and a lady

Metal street sign, lots of pipes, new development, old frontage.

Summer in the winter beer garden on the South Bank

For 3 days we can forget winter, cold weather and Christmas, and instead hang out within the heated dome of the 'Corona Extra Summer' pop-up bar on the South Bank's Riverside Walkway (between Waterloo Bridge and Gabriel's Wharf) from Thursday 15th to Saturday 17th December.

Well, hell, why not? What's not to like?

The Art of Walking

Last Saturday I went on one of Fox&Squirrel's walks. F&S offer 'lifestyle walks' all over London themed around fashion, architecture, food etc.

This one was an art walk in Peckham, an area of London that is now bursting with creative talent, no doubt brought on by cheap rent and available space.

Our guide was Natasha, a very erudite and knowledgeable young lady, who met us outside the award-winning Peckham Library. First we visited Peckham Space, opposite the library and then she walked us up the road (passing a relevant bit of cement graffiti) to the lovely Passmore Edwards South London Art Gallery – a free purpose-built gallery space built by the great philanthropist. I was much more interested in the building than the art inside it. I loved the As and Hs on the sign on the front of the building, and found the old Pugin-esque floor tiles, the painted sockets and the old sign board in the back courtyard way more inspiring than what was on show.

Then we walked down Lyndhurst Way and stopped to look at the cleaned-up house that was once a famous squat for artists. Around the corner I noticed a stink pipe. Relevant? Then to a space functioning as both a home and a gallery where we watched two looped films of images of cars and lorries going down the freeway but manipulated into endless tunnels. It was mesmerising. But again, free, though the fella had opened the door especially for our group as it wasn't normally open on Saturdays.

Bells were ringing in my head about whether this 2 hour walk was good value (I spotted an old alarm bell casing showing the old Bishopsgate telephone code!) – after all nothing had an entrance fee, and using a South London Art Map this would cost nothing at all. But I was having a nice time with nice people...

And so to the Hannah Barry Gallery, almost buried amongst a sea of semi-derelict buildings in an old industrial estate. The highlight of my day was meeting the wonderful Hannah Barry herself. Diminutive Hannah belies her size and age – she is a powerhouse of ideas and enthusiasm. She talked eloquently and sensibly about art and galleries. And I loved the metal sculptures there by James Capper.

Then to a bar in one of the arches under Peckham Rye Station for art chat.

A nice afternoon. Thanks.

Bulldoze Battersea Power Station?

Ooh this should rile a few people... but here goes...

The latest plans for the shell of what used to be this wonderful building is to convert it into shops and offices; er, haven't we been here been here before? A few times, even?

And is it really going to happen this time?

I have always hoped that BPS could be brought back to life in a good way, but after all the years of neglect I am starting to think that someone should have the balls to just knock the thing down now and start again from scratch – after all, the new developments that surround it, like the Howard and Warwick buildings, haven't exactly been built with any sympathy to it – it just looks silly surrounded by all those charmless glass boxes.

When BPS was originally built as part of the National Grid system it was an architectural showcase full of polished metal and waxed wood, to show the rest of the world what Britain was capable of. Workers there had to wear felt over-shoes so as not to mark the expensive parquet flooring. But all that is long gone and what is left has been ruined thanks to the removal of the roof decades ago. It's all so sad. What are we really trying to hold onto anymore? And do we really need yet another shopping centre?

The latest plans look to me to be extremely similar to the Kings Cross development. Everywhere is gonna end up looking the same; it's all so homogenous.

Below is a collection of architectural images mostly taken in the immediate Nine Elms vicinity. Also included are two shots featuring that hideous Albion Riverside Building, which is further upstream.

Ping-pong, whiff-whaff and other stinky things

100 table tennis tables have appeared at prime locations around London.

More about that below, but it got me thinking that the names 'ping-pong' and 'whiff-whaff' both sound like bad smells, hence this collection of stink pipes, also known as stench pipes.

These tall metal tubes, larger versions of the ones found on many old houses, were put in place to direct the foul smells from underground passageways up and above and away from our ancestors' nostrils, and as you can see, a lot of them are still in place today. Many were quite ornate and designed to blend in with the other street furniture of the day. Indeed, these days, sometimes it's hard to discern whether what's left used to be an arc light or a stench pipe.

For more, see here, here, here, here and here.

The month-long ping pong table event in London is supported by National Lottery funding from Sport England’s Innovation Fund and aims to get a million more people playing more sport by 2012. It will then travel to four more UK cities over the next two years, returning to London for 2012 in time for the Olympic Games.

Oh, and according to Boris, whiff-whaff is/was table tennis's original name... something to do with that being the sound the champagne cork made as it was hit with a hard-backed book or cigar tin back and forth across the dinner table.